STRSS 31 – The number one airbnb tool for preventing parties w/ David Krauss

Video Transcript

 

00:00:00

There’s so many opportunities along that first, you know, day of them occupying to educate them about things that could cause you the host massive nightmares later on. If you don’t tell them about

 

00:00:12

This is episode number three, one of Short Term and success stories, podcast you an investor. That’s looking to have your home professionally managed, go to cohost.com for more information. Welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short-term rental business. 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. And it really helps support the show if you haven’t done so already you going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community. In this episode, I have the special honor of speaking with David Cross.

 

00:00:56

David is the co-founder of noise aware, an innovative noise monitoring service for Short Term and Vacation Rental managers. A little bit about David is that after a party happened at one of his properties, he was forced to sell his property and lost over $30,000, which almost ruined his short term rental business. It was at that point that David knew that he had to start something that would help future hosts not get into the same situation by preventing noise. So he met his co-founder Andrew shells and they started to build this like smoke detector for noise, with the goal of saving short-term rental property owners and managers from the same experience that David had to endure. This is a really great episode, doing a deep dive into what noise aware is, how it can help you and why it is a tool for hosts. Now, if you follow us on Vacation Rental Machine, John and I talk a lot about noise, where, because it is such a unique product that does help you to be able to better protect your property.

 

00:01:54

I know John is a big fan boy of David. So he was, he was pretty jealous that I, I got to speak within, but no really, really good episode. I highly recommend, we also talk about David’s other little passion project that he is really diving into, and that is rent responsibly. So it’s actually funny this episode, we talk about half of noise aware and how that can benefit hosts. The other half, we’re talking about rent responsibly and rent responsibly is an organization that David founded, which is all about trying to convert the negative bias and change that perception of short-term rentals. So he works very actively in the legal space, trying to work with local counties, to educate them on the benefits of Airbnb and short-term rentals and the tools that you can use to be able to prevent these parties in hopes of being able to allow hosts, to be able to Short Term rent.

 

00:02:49

So David is a professional party squasher and this is a great episode that just talks all about that. So don’t want to miss it 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 special honor of bringing on David is the co-founder of noise aware and a nonprofit, a rent responsibly and excuse excuse the noise. David is a very, you know, very busy on the road a lot of times. So he just had a moment to sit down with us in a beautiful bench. If you are on YouTube, get to get the beautiful view with the trees, but David, if you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself and explaining what inspired you to create noise aware and how you kind of got started into that.

 

00:03:35

Sure. First please do excuse the noise. I was just joking that, you know, entrepreneurs are always on the go, but I’m literally walking between things in the middle of downtown Boston in the summer. It’s my favorite place in the world. So please excuse us, but thank you so much for having me, honestly, this is a wonderful opportunity to talk a little bit about noise, where, but mostly not help the folks out there that are listening on their journey. And, and I’m sure there are many people who are in different stages. So we’ll try and be more broad, but you know, th the story of noise aware is probably the most organic startup story you’ll find. And that’s because I am a short term rental manager and certainly was at the time when we started noise aware and had the exact problem that we’re solving. So very quickly, I was managing a couple units in Dallas.

 

00:04:31

Somebody threw a massive party, kind of that nightmare scenario. You see a lot of those articles on the news about so-and-so’s house destroyed because of a party and, you know, waking up on Monday morning, finding out about this party, that lapsed from Friday all the way through Saturday night, I was like, man, I was two miles away. How could I prevented that went online. There was no such product that would have been able to notify me with relevant information at a timely basis and simultaneously protecting privacy. And so we saw that void or vacuum in the world, my co-founder and I decided to fill it ultimately as just a product, a tool for me. So I could sleep at night with peace of mind. And when we realized that I was not the only one who had that same concern, we brought the solution, we built from me into the marketplace and it’s, it’s been a roller coaster, but a fun one.

 

00:05:31

You know, I, I just think that that’s really interesting because you’re, you’re a short term rental operator that created a product specifically for, you know, short term renters. What, I mean, this seems like it’s a pretty like, man, like this is a, a really good idea. Has nobody else had done this, like out there, like some type of noise monitoring device that notifies you when and when levels get too high.

 

00:05:55

So, great question. The funny part is that a lot of investors ask us that question, like, how did nobody do this yet? So I think the key thing to understand, and this is the key thing to understand with the time. And, you know, the moment in time that we’re all in is that there are 50, a hundred great small, maybe it’s maybe some even large businesses that have not even yet been established or are conjured up. And we are all as owners and managers probably struggling with something that could be solved by one of your listeners. So it is, you know, it is the most ripe time for ideas where people like, oh, why didn’t anybody think of that? And, and the, the, you know, the underpinning reason is we’re in inning one or two, or probably two or three of the short term rental story.

 

00:06:52

I’ve not heard of anybody talking about 10 years from now, but we need to start thinking about 10 years from now. And that’s the approach that noise aware has taken a lot of our partnerships. We just recently announced a massive partnership with booking.com. A lot of those conversations we have with those platforms are about 10 years from now. And I think we’re all just starting to pick our heads up and realize that, you know, short-term rentals. I have a lot of statistics that I can throw out there and I’ll, I’ll try and spruce or sprinkle some of them in, but short-term rentals have skyrocketed into popularity and common, you know, understanding of accommodation options, no longer alternative accommodations is just an accommodation option, but it’s preferred when you have over three people or it’s an over three nights day. So once you have that understanding of the needs of the traveler, the needs of the proprietor are completely different than they were 10 years ago. So what we’re building now is going to help create the sustainable future. That we’ll all be a part of

 

00:07:57

Now. So to 2012, you had your first guest, 2014, you started going more full-time into a hosting in 2015, you, you met your, your, your other co-founder to start noise aware. Did you have like any type of entrepreneurial background before that besides just like hosting? Like, I mean, that’s a pretty big endeavor to take on, you know, just starting up a company.

 

00:08:20

Yeah. A great question. And I, I, I love when people, entrepreneurs, certainly not somebody who’s made it by any means yet. We’re still, we’re still grinding as hard as we always will, but when, you know, Elon Musk or somebody stands up there and it’s like, you know, at five years old, I started a business and stuff. Like most of that is bullshit. Right. And it’s just like a myth that people tell. So I was like, you know, my story is like maybe a lemonade stand growing up and whatever, that’s not, that’s not what happened. Ultimately, once I got into the workforce, I realized I hated it. And the main reason is there’s, you know, it’s like punch the clock, do this, do that, get your report in on time. And I just said, like, I got all these ideas. Like, what if I have a new way to do the report?

 

00:09:09

They’re like, no, no, no, no, don’t just do it the way we told you to. And I couldn’t stand that. So I will say that it wasn’t until I realized what I don’t like that I realized I was an entrepreneur. And I guess, you know, not like a, somewhat an analog or kind of secondary parallel thing is in my twenties. I’m 35 now, but in my twenties, I loved to party. And, you know, I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I would organize these charity events where instead of just inviting friends to a bar that had a cover and, you know, blah, blah, blah, I would work with the bar. And one of them that I actually worked at, so is quite easy. I would just say, Hey, I’m going to have my birthday party here instead of making it free for all my friends, charge them anyways, and then let’s take the money and donate it. We partnered with the local hospital here that did not have a choice in games, budget. So we bought toys and games for that hospital. And so, I mean, those are the kind of needles that you thread in life. And once I realized that, Hey, you know, entrepreneurs, it’s almost like a similar game, right? How do you provide something, get money, apply it, to provide a better service. And that virtuous flywheel starts. I mean, I was kind of doing that before. I just didn’t know it was called entrepreneurs until I guess somebody started paying me.

 

01:10:30

I think that that’s really cool. And I want it to highlight that, you know, that you’re not just a company, you know, just not just noise, aware, not just David, David Krauss, you know, there there’s, there’s a story behind it. You’re you were an operator. You, you know, you are a party guy, but now you’re a party squasher, which is kind of funny. But if, if for the people that don’t know, what noise aware is, could you give a rundown of like, how does it work? And, and you know, how does it kind of function? Is it like very intrusive or is it passive?

 

01:11:01

Yeah. So I think we fall under the IOT banner. Most of the time, when you think IOT, you think like that shelf at home Depot or something of like smart light bulbs and things, we are not, we’re more of a B2B IOT concept. So we’re not on the shelf at home Depot because short term rental folks, don’t go to home Depot to buy really anything. If they can avoid it, I’m sure they buy it online and all that. But so in terms of what noise, where is as an identity, fundamentally, we are a service that requires hardware and our customers are generally small businesses. So once you disabuse yourself of the idea that we’re, you know, a smart light bulb type company, it fundamentally changes our, the way we deliver service. So we always answer the phone. You don’t, you won’t see, they call us on Sunday.

 

01:11:54

Like, you know, I wouldn’t do it just the test because somebody will answer. And they probably aren’t, you know, sitting in the office waiting. But if you did call us on Sunday and you needed us almost invariably, there’s somebody there. And that’s because we are the customers we seek to serve. Meaning I grew up, I knew that most smart home companies don’t want to answer phones. So as a fundamental, you know, service provider, I said, we’re going to be available. I know that was a long way of saying, I’m not really that much, but here’s, here’s what noise, where is we are a couple, a couple as a service. We’re either a peace of mind as a service. We’re a privacy safe noise monitoring as a service we’re smart noise monitoring as a service, all these sorts of things. And the way the system works is we have hardware component, which is our purpose built, designed by us sensor.

 

01:12:52

And then we have a software component, which is our dashboard and all of the integrations and different elements that get you the alert when you need it. And the rest of the information would be the noise data graph. And I’ll just walk somebody. It’s almost easier to think of it in like how you get started. So if you were to go online and buy a noise aware sensor, let’s say you have a single family home with a patio in the back. You’re going to get an indoor sensor and an outdoor sensor. The indoor sensor lists at 1 99 outdoor sensors at 99. And we’re going to send you those two sensors with some onboarding information. You’ll download an app, you take the sensor indoor sensor and you plug it into a common area. Let’s just say the living room, it takes up the top outlet. And then you screw it into this group.

 

01:13:45

Wait, so prevent tampering or people pulling it out. And then you’re teach the wifi name and password to the sensor, which takes all of three or four seconds. And then it’s going to boot up and connect to your wifi. And then all of a sudden on your app or your computer know your PC dashboard, you will start to see the noise levels populate on a graph. And on that graph you have on the Y axis noise, risk score. So we are not a simple decimal measuring device. We have created a really sophisticated algorithm that is taking intermittent samples or readings, not samples, but readings of how loud is it right now? And let’s say, it’s our scale is one to a hundred. Let’s say it’s a 70. And it’s like holding. So 70 would be loud, but it’s, you know, your, your graph would start to draw a line at 70, but what happens is noise goes up and down.

 

01:14:47

And so when you’re on the software side, you’re going to set a right. So nobody cares about the 99.5% of the time that there’s not a noise issue. It’s one out of 200 nights book. You have a noise issue. And that’s what our data has proven time and time again. So that one out of 200 nights, when the noise is going to go up and stay up and remain above the level that you’ve said is acceptable. You’re going to get an alert. So this is now how the product functions, you’re getting an alert, which is either SMS, email push notification, or if we’re integrated with your property software system, you can build an automation around that. And once you have that critical insight, you can then address the issue directly with your guests as appropriate. So you, you said that your, your partner uses noise aware in his units.

 

01:15:43

I imagine that he’s had at least one noise alert over time. I imagine he was able to remedy the situation remotely by sending the guest a friendly text message or whatever he needed to do a phone call. And, and then what we see is within 15 minutes, the noise levels will then go back down to an acceptable level. And you realize the guests rent places not to cause trouble. They just, oftentimes, like I said, over three people is the average it’s just gets loud or people turn on Bluetooth speakers or whatever it is. And if you have quiet hours, the best way to manage noise is proactively in an, a hospitable way. We enable people to do that. And the last thing I’ll say is our service is $99 a year per property, or $10 a month. And if you are a large manager, just call us pricing and enterprise pricing. We also have additional services like our noise monitors, soothing, our response center, which is an overnight service that will take your alerts and then respond to your guests with your pre scripted messages. We just have you tell us all that and we make sure to do it the way you want us to. So you don’t even have to touch the thing. But yeah, I mean, it’s fun. We’ve been building this for four years now. We’ve done, I think over 400,000 reservations, we’re getting pretty big man.

 

01:17:11

Now, I guess one of the, one of the first things that, that I would maybe see as being a concern is, you know, a lot, a lot of hosts have their accounts shut down on Airbnb because someone reports them for maybe like having some type of device like a recording or a camera. Airbnb is very fickle and they just kind of say like, Hey, if anybody reports anything, it gets, it gets shut down. And then they apologize afterwards. So is there, have there been problems with people that have like a noise monitoring device? And then when someone sends them a message like, Hey, you know, we noticed that it’s getting a little bit too noisy and they’re saying, well, how did you like how, and has that ever been a problem?

 

01:17:52

Great, great question. That kind of fundamentally comes down to, you know, educating the marketplace, educating the traveler, and that we’ve been doing that for 40 years. And we do have a good relationship with Airbnb VRBO booking. At this point, they all have a pretty clear what they terminate their terminology surveillance policy, but it’s just a bunch of lawyers who wrote rules and, but they’re important rules. So when you have noise, where in the home you do, you are required on Airbnb to disclose it in your connected devices listing, but that’s actually a really good opportunity to begin the value that noise aware it can bring to your, your listing. And by that, I mean, it’s an opportunity to say, you know, cause you can write it out. And this is what I have in mind is, you know, in order to remain compliant with city rules or building rules, we have a noise monitoring tool called noise where it’s a hundred percent privacy safe.

 

01:18:59

If it does get too loud, we’ll contact you just to ensure that you don’t get yourself into trouble. Like that sort of messaging goes a really long way. And actually, if you are a noise where customer, we have a bunch of different ways to say that. So we take all the guesswork out of it, but yes, disclosure is huge. It’s important. You should do it. Technically if you read legalees, if you have an iPhone, that’s not even in service and it’s in a drawer and it’s in your home that you’re renting out, you technically have to disclose that there is an iPhone. That’s not even like, it’s crazy how some of these rules have been made, but functionally definitely disclosure with noise. Whereas is the important thing. Also that’s one, one opportunity to disclose it. The other is in your house rules site. So what happens when people check into a rental, they normally throw their foot or other stuff down, you look for the wifi password and then, you know, has a group of people they’ll just start, you know, their vacation or their visit or whatever.

 

02:20:07

And there’s so many opportunities along that first day of them occupying to educate them about things that could cause you the host massive nightmares later on, if you don’t tell them about it. So, Hey, I just want to let you know that neighbors are very sensitive to noise. We have a noise monitoring system. That’s called noise aware if we contact you, it’s only because it was too loud. I’m sure there won’t be an issue, but this is part of our service. We have to do it because the building has strict noise. That sort of language was a long, long way. And frankly, what we’ve started to see is guests actually appreciate this as an outcome because hospitality is the name of the game, right? So if you have positive touch points with your guests along the way, you’re almost guaranteeing five star reviews, but this is just one of the many times where if you approach it the right way, people say, well, thank you, geez. I, you know, I didn’t realize that if people do get louder than they think they are and in different environments, that causes problems that they don’t expect. And don’t want that fines are up to $500, a thousand dollars. Like you should be telling your guests that that’s what the fines are and you’re going to help them avoid them.

 

02:21:22

Now w what about, what about for like big houses? If you have a big house, maybe a single noise aware just like in the specific location, maybe like the people recognize that that is a device, maybe it’s recording. They don’t know what it is. So they try to relocate somewhere else. Is, do you have to have multiple devices throughout the house to be able to get that full picture? Or can you just have one device?

 

02:21:46

Great, great question. And I’ll, there’s kind of two parts of that. And that’s generally speaking, like how do you deal with larger homes? And then two is like, what if a guest is actually like, you know, hell bent on throwing a party or like wants to be loud and doesn’t want to be, I mean, first of all, that is a guest that you’re probably going to have an issue with one way or another. Those are the people who leave replaced trash, who, you know, kind of just misuse the home. So ultimately noise aware, prevents misuse of the home because it shows what your, like, how you’ve structured your operation. And we just see better outcomes. I know this because I’ve, I’ve hosted over a 5,500 guests and you just you’d know when these things are gonna go wrong. So to that point noise where it should help you either prevent that guest from checking in ever, because they’ll see that you care and you know, this isn’t a party house.

 

02:22:40

So that’s why I have this technology. Or if, if they do begin to, you know, Hey, just throw a party. Cause like, I, I can listen to music by myself pretty loud and it’s not a party, but it’s just sometimes it’s the wrong time place or time of night. So just saying like, if, if you’re likely to cause an issue and always there is going to help you correct. Or contact the guests at that point, and then you don’t, you don’t see a lot of it happening over and over again. So those let’s put that to the side. The other side is large homes. So large homes are tricky because there’s a lot more variability than multi-family, but we do have an outdoor sensor. I, I mentioned in the previous scenario, if you bought noise, where for your single family home on the patio, the other sensor you would get is an outdoor sensor. It’s weatherproof ruggedized. It communicates with the indoor sensor over sub gigahertz networks. So it can go about 50 to a hundred feet away from the indoor sensor, but it’s for porches, patios, hot tub areas, or big deal, roof decks, that sort of thing. And, and so a combination of an indoor sensor and appropriately placed outdoor sensors, you can cover virtually any,

 

02:23:56

You know, with, with booking.com, taking you guys on. I mean, that, that, that is a really good, you know, that’s a really good partnership. Booking, booking.com is, is, is a tremendous really growing platform. And I think that kind of stands the point that you guys are not just providing a, a shoddy, you know, just like a gimmick or something. I don’t know if you want to maybe dispel some of the myths that maybe you’ve heard that about noise where maybe not being a legit product or that it doesn’t really monitor good noise. I don’t know if you kind of want to talk about that.

 

02:24:33

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, I think our customers speak way more authoritatively about what we can do for them than I possibly could. I mean, I don’t know if you know, hair clubs for men, like the guy who is the president, the president, I’m also a client. He has a full head of hair. So to me I’m like, you know, being a co-founder or like, I know it works. The only reason we started into a company is because it started working for me as a manager and was like, holy shit, other people are going to need this. So that was like, before, that was, that was generation one. We’re on gen three right now. I mean, I think one thing to understand is that, you know, I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’ve never had a problem, or we’ve never had a sensor that for some reason broke or whatever like that, that happens.

 

02:25:23

We’re a technology company, or what we do stand behind is our service. So we answer the phone, we replace any problems, you know, you can ask people, we go above and beyond at every opportunity. And I’ve instilled that in the team and the culture of the business, because I wouldn’t stand for it any other way. And again, I’m, you know, I’m a customer, not, not only a customer as well. And in terms of, you know, credibility, like, you know, we’re, we’re frankly, we’re actually pretty old at four years old in this space, which is hilarious. But I think it says a lot that booking.com chose noise aware as their partner in north America. And I mean, there’s, let’s just put it this way. There’ll be a lot more news and a lot more things happening with booking.com and other companies all goes to plan. And, you know, the idea that we have to justify or kind of defend ourselves, like I’m just hoping it will probably always will as a company, but on some levels, like I really would encourage people to ask other folks who’ve used noise aware if you have any questions or you want biased opinion.

 

02:26:42

I mean, some of the earliest customers we have were Saunder lyric, Tomio Alfred, Alfred Neato by Airbnb. Like there’s just a lot of companies out there that have chosen us and have standardized our product and every single one of their units for a reason

 

02:27:01

Now, you know, going, going back to, to a booking booking.com, taking you guys on as a partner was, there’s like some type of like serious vetting process that had to be established before they take you on. And, and of, if you wouldn’t mind talking about the deal that kind of unfolded with that partnership.

 

02:27:19

Yeah. Let me, let me think about that. Cause it’s actually really exciting. So booking.com, you know, depending on who you ask or what day of the week it is, has as many listings, if not more than Airbnb. So to understand it’s their headquarters is in Amsterdam. So they’re, they’re not based in the U S but they do have an increasing presence in the U S not really experienced that much. I can only say you’ll probably just see them more and more as you go, as Airbnb gets to Asia, booking comes here and that sort of stuff, but booking has a real commitment. There’s something called sustainable tourism and just the trust and safety of this industry. We, we all know, and we’d be foolish not to admit that there are trust and safety issues that are still being figured out with respect to just, you know, you’re welcoming people into a home. I mean, hotels deal with trust, safety and flawed way more than they would care to admit as well. It’s just part of hospitality and transactions and sharing spaces.

 

02:28:26

But with respect to booking.com, they, they found us a long time ago and we just started working with them, meeting their team. They got comfortable. Of course there was a vetting process. And then they said, you know, we really want to work with you guys on a joint partnership. We want to get our customers, the people who list on booking more access to noise aware because they, they saw the value. Again, we checked out all the, all the things that they wanted to see us do. So we, we launched this partnership. So here’s, here’s the exciting part. If anybody fell asleep in the last five minutes, wake up now, because this part matters the most booking.com. If you sign up through our landing page and I’ll make sure you have that link, if you sign up through our landing page and then register a unit on booking.com that had not yet previously been listed, you will get a free indoor noise wear sensor.

 

02:29:24

Again, I don’t know if anybody heard that, but no. I mean, it’s the first time we’ve done something. It is very exciting, but a free indoor noise where sensor values $200 and noise aware. We’ll give you six months of free service. So value is about $260. And then you just can get bookings. You get revenue from booking.com. If you have this, this tool, you’ll go six months. You don’t have no obligation to continue after for whatever reason you don’t love it. And, and that’s where we’re at. And again, like I said, you know, this is, this is a dream come true for us because, you know, we want partners that can help us get this tool to people who need it and even better if it costs them nothing. And then our partners like booking have more, more options for people on booking.com that are looking to book, or most importantly, we’re infusing the industry in the marketplace with tools that, that just help the process go better.

 

03:30:28

And I’ll use this as a slight segue to talk about why the bigger picture is important here. So if you’re not familiar with the regulatory environment in this country right now, around short-term rentals and frankly, the world, it is critically important that we, as the stakeholders, the owners, the managers, the hosts in this industry take responsibility for the activity on the properties that we’re responsible for. And that is not a pitch for noise aware because it’s just, there are some properties that may not, you know, noise might not be a big issue, parking or trash. I mean, people like why is trash a big issue? There’s a lot of homes in the mountains where there are bears. And if you don’t keep trash indoors bears count, like there are a lot of issues when you, when we’re doing this. And it’s, it’s early stages. So tools like noise where partners like booking and the responsibility that we collectively, and I’m speaking as a host owner of short term rentals and a manager of short-term rentals first and foremost is where I started second as the noise guy.

 

03:31:36

And then third as the guy who started an advocacy organization called rent responsibly, that is bringing more information about what are reasonable, responsible expectations for people in our space. What can cities expect from us? What should we expect from cities? Because we should expect a lot from our cities. They should also expect, you know, an element of responsibility from us. And when all of those elements go well together, we will end up with a beautiful future in this space. We’re just early innings and we have to take responsibility. And I think booking.com has done that. We’re doing that. And I encourage anybody. Who’s interested to go to rent responsibility.org. If you’re interested to find out more about that and then make sure to hit up the landing page with booking.com so that we can get you noise aware, courtesy and booking

 

03:32:30

Now with, with rent responsibly, w w what is, what is kind of the, the goal with that? Are you specifically trying to use the partnerships that you’ve with some of these bigger platforms and some of these, you know, partners that you’ve been working with to educate cities and counties that are you have yet to change the regulations, or are you trying to help the counties and cities that have already changed the regulations in order to try to allow short term rental operators to continue their business?

 

03:32:59

Great, great question. And, you know, responsibilities is young. We’re trying to build a coalition of kind of allies and people. That’s not, not necessarily local governments because ultimately local governments want to hear from their local constituents. So we’re trying to empower the local constituents. Like you said, you’re in DC, DC has gone through a whole rigamarole to get where they are with their ordinance, and it’ll keep changing over time. So your voice will be a lot more relevant, powerful in DC than mine or reference possibly. So the question becomes, how do you create a scalable local advocacy organization, meaning how do I am? How do I, and, and all the other people who are doing this, I mean, just as background, I’ve been in about 30 different city halls than in these conversations over the last couple of years, because people want to know what short term rental people are doing about noise issues, for example.

 

03:33:56

And so we explain it how it works, and then normally our customers then say, you know, here’s why I do it, and blah, blah, blah. So it’s, it’s all about getting the local people, the information they need to properly advocate for themselves. That’s, that’s one fundamental element of rent responsibility, the other piece of it. And I’ll, I’ll, I think we probably have about five to 10 more minutes. So I want to make sure to get these last two things in the number one thing, or so the three legs of rent responsibly are to advocate, educate and celebrate within this industry. So advocate means how do we give you or anybody, the ability and information, the data, the playbook to advocate for yourself and, you know, build a combined voice. Usually there’s a short term rental Alliance. And again, I I’m, I, I love doing this stuff because it’s about giving people the ability to advocate for themselves.

 

03:34:58

That’s where it started the next two pieces, the next two legs of the stool educate. So I think there’s just a fundamental lack of education resources when people get started, or when you’re trying to turn it into a professional operation or, you know, just the constant flow of new products and all that stuff. So we’re trying to build just that centralized education resource, where we’re bringing or getting access to existing educational resources to everybody. So it’s, it’s actually not about creating just another, how to guide is if somebody is finding 25, how to guides and they don’t know where to start, how do we get them all under one roof and put a little bit of organization there? So no matter what stage of your journey you’re on, you can probably find value. You know, Hey, I need, I need to know what technology is out there.

 

03:35:46

Like there should be a technology section. Again, this stuff is being built right now in the background. So you’re not going to find it yet, but education’s number two. The last piece is the one I’m most excited about celebrate. We don’t celebrate our industry enough. We don’t, and nobody does it for us. So that’s bullshit. We’re going to do that ourselves. I’ve met so many amazing entrepreneurs, amazing people, people who, you know, got crushed by the recession, built theirs, their business up by the bootstraps, and now they might be facing a regulatory issue, or they just, nobody has ever told their story. So I’ve engaged professional writers to take people’s stories and turn them into kind of a short form, you know, feature piece on these wonderful people. And that actually costs a little bit of money, which, which is like, you know, it’s a no brainer to do.

 

03:36:40

So I realized, like there’s not a lot of just money sitting around to celebrate our industry, but that’s why we’re figuring out a way to do it easily. And the way you any listener can contribute to that is go to rent responsibly dot or sign up for it. You’ll see advocate educate, celebrate, and you just sign up right there. And then it’ll ask you two questions. It’ll ask you, why did you get started? And why is this industry important to you? If you write a short paragraph right there, we, that information goes into our system. And then we’re just finding writers to take your little snippets, contact you directly, directly interview you and turn out these short pieces. So then we can start to understand who are the people of the short-term rental industry. And that ends up becoming a really powerful advocacy tool. When let’s say we wrote your story up, and then we’ve made sure that the DC council knew who you were and had a polished story of why you’re an entrepreneur trying to bring value to your community that ultimately services the advocacy engine.

 

03:37:46

So those are the three elements. I know that might’ve been a little bit complicated, but the call to action is go to rent responsibly, tell us why you got started and why you love the industry. And we will try to get, you know, writers to start to celebrate these stories. And we’re, we’re going to start pushing those out in the coming months. So I know that’s like, you can tell I got worked up right there, but like, this is what I care about more than anything else. And then I know, I know we’re, again, we’re short, a little short on time right now, but the last thing I want to say is to frame up where we are in this moment in our industry, and nobody has a crystal ball. So the future is unwritten the best, the best, the best, the best analogy or analog to this moment for me has been the Ford model T story.

 

03:38:33

So have you heard this? Sorry, if you wouldn’t mind refreshing the listeners. Okay. Yeah, no, of course. So the Ford model T was, was thought to be the beginning of modern mass production in cars. It was, it was not the first automobile, 1908, Henry Ford creates a system for producing cars that makes it cheaper and more democratically available, meaning that people who are building them can actually buy them. And so it’s no longer just the rich man’s folly to drive a car. As soon as that happened, the world changed forever. It just took time for the world around automobiles to adjust. And that’s where we are right now. And I’ll, I’ll explain it as succinctly as I can. 1909, there were 200,000 cars on the road by 1970 or 19 16, 7 years later, 2 million cars. So cause just appeared on the roads, but all the rules of the Rover for horses and buggies and the train cars that were going up and down, kids did not have backyards.

 

03:39:40

They played in the street and horses and buggies went five miles an hour. So it didn’t really matter. Cars went like 20, 30 miles an hour and they didn’t know which side of the road to drive on. So just had all these real problems that people who weren’t in the car had to deal with the car. So sometimes that’s how people feel about short-term roads. Oh, I live across the street or I live near what I just have to deal with it. I don’t think that that’s a forever problem. And so the sooner that we can evolve as an industry to start not only educating people about, you know, the rules of the road, whether it’s a traveler, a new host, you know, a veteran hosts, the city, those people need to be educated about the rules of the road. And the city ultimately has to create the right rules of the road.

 

04:40:22

But here’s what happened when the car was, you know, at this 2 million car moment. And most of the road, 75% of the injuries were from people not in the car. So that’s, that’s, you know, innocent bystanders, that’s drunk drivers like swerving off the road. And all of those things are just the nature of the beast. When you have this real disruption in society and the sooner we can get a handle on it, create better frameworks for governments to respond appropriately, reduce the risk taxes, get collected. People, you know, carry on with their lives and money stays in the community and individuals like you. And I can provide hospitality and be ambassadors for a city. That’s the end game. That’s the solution we want to get to. We’re just now in this moment of generating private solutions, like, you know, like for example, noise, where we’re solving a small, you know, relatively small problem and the big theme of things, but it’s a necessary problem to solve.

 

04:41:24

I mean, you you’re educating people. You created a podcast that is a necessary thing to do is spread the word and get, and get people involved. And every host owner manager has their own evolutionary cycle. And I’ll leave you with this in 1925, I have this great graph and it’s like two lines that create a big X. And it shows that the amount of vehicle miles traveled has exponentially increased since the 1920s. That’s kind of a no shit. Sherlock, statistically more miles are driven now than before. But the chances of dying in an automobile accident, it’s 90% safer now than it was in the twenties because in cars are going like two and three times faster, but it’s because public policy there’s speed limits. There’s drivers, there’s other auction drivers education. So there’s speed limits, there’s drunk driving laws, then there’s education as a driver’s ed that’s, you know, compulsory driver’s tests, things like that. And then lastly, technology seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, just safer cars. Once we get those three things, right. We can reduce the risk of this industry, you know, hopefully 90% or better. And I think people will be celebrating us the way we’re already starting to rent responsibly. And that’s the end game.

 

04:42:44

That’s awesome. David D man, you, you, you killed, you killed that advocacy speech right there. That was, that was a very well, and, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but, but last thing, can you tell us a little bit about what’s the future of noise or are there any like features or products? Is it just going to be noise monitoring or do you have anything cool or some more integrations with some different software coming that maybe we can be excited about?

 

04:43:07

Yeah. You kind of nailed it right there at the end. So we were actively working on integrations. We’re integrated with Guesty right now. I know a Smartbnb is, is a big one that we’re working with. Again, we can’t put timelines on these things. Exactly. But I would say we’re again, we’re very responsive. If you have questions, you know, info at noise, aware David at noise, where.io any, like just, just send a message in our chat, actually that our website, like if you have any questions and not answered on this call or this call, this podcast, definitely just go to our website, type it into the chat. Somebody will get back to you soon as I can. But specifically, you know, the software integrations is a, is a huge push for us as we do that, it just unlocks our ability to do more and more for people.

 

04:43:55

And then, you know, ultimately the indoor and the outdoor sensor that launched basically at the beginning of this year. So folks, if you have either tried noise where in the past, just keep up with our core product as well. And you’ll see that we’re rapidly improving that. I mean, I, again, I’m, I’m, I hate the hard sell, like go ask somebody else who uses noise, aware. They’ll tell you how they really feel. But our, our product has saved so many people really like their property. I mean, it started when somebody threw a party at my place and I ended up selling that property because the neighbor relations got so bad for $30,000 loss. And I don’t want to see that ever happen to anybody, not the least of which is my neighbors who had just put up with a weekend of like nightmare. But at the end of the day, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re building a product that I think, you know, everybody should at least take a look at the time, time when it’s right for you, you know, let us know and we’d be happy to take care of you.

 

04:44:59

Definitely. Yeah. David, I just want to thank you so much noise away. Or it’s something that we, we, my partner, my co-hosts from Vacation Rental Machine, John Bell, he’s got like 30 properties right now and every, every property right now, he, he has incorporated noise aware into it. So I mean, it’s a, it’s a tried and true. What you guys are doing is a very powerful, you’re working with some big, you know, with booking and I’m sure there’s a lot more companies that you’re going to be working with, you know, really supporting the legitimacy and what you’re doing with rent responsibility, the, the, the education. I think that that is so cool. I’ll include everything in the show notes, waist to reach out to you. You can also go to the listeners. I highly recommend if you are planning on scaling and going on to booking, definitely use that landing page.

 

04:45:44

I’ll also include a link to a noise aware in the resource page on Short Term Sage, all the, all the resources in the companies that we use, we include on the resource page as well. But thank you so much, David. And 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.