Latest / Thanks For Visiting / 235. Permission To Pivot Your Airbnb Business

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235. Permission To Pivot Your Airbnb Business · Thanks For Visiting

0:00
Sarah: Hello, welcome back for another great episode.
0:02
My name is Sarah Karakaian.
0:03
Annette: I am Annette Grant, and together we are--
0:05
Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks For Visiting.
0:06
Sarah: We're going to kick off this episode like we do every week,
0:08
sharing one of you, our amazing listeners, viewers, Instagram
0:12
friend, who uses our hashtag STR--
0:14
Annette: YouTube subscribers.
0:16
Sarah: Oh, there she goes.
0:17
She's pushing that YouTube.
0:19
It's good over there.
0:19
Annette: We put up good stuff there.
0:20
Sarah: We really, really do, and it's different from the podcast.
0:22
And it's the podcast.
0:23
It's all the things.
0:24
But with that, we are sharing, um, one of you, our listeners who
0:28
uses our hashtag #STRShareSunday.
0:31
We will share you on all of the things.
0:34
Get some free marketing.
0:36
Why not?
0:37
Annette, who are we sharing this week?
0:39
Annette: This week we are sharing @berrycreek brokenbow,
0:43
exactly the way it sounds.
0:44
Again @berrycreek brokenbow.
0:47
And there's a special shout out to this co-host and property owner, Megan.
0:52
She is one of our members inside of our hosting Business Mastery membership, and
0:56
she was also a speaker at our live event.
1:00
Sarah: And she had some mic-drop moments.
1:01
Annette: She did.
1:02
And speaking of our live, be on the lookout folks.
1:05
We are going to be releasing the dates soon.
1:08
But let's talk about Berry Creek Broken Bow and what I love about
1:11
Megan and her Instagram handle.
1:14
First of all, Berry Creek, there are several berries in her lineup of homes.
1:18
There's Cranberry, Strawberry, Blackberry, and Raspberry.
1:21
So I love that she's kept a theme with all of her-- naming her rentals
1:25
here, but keeps them all under the Berry Creek umbrella of berries.
1:28
But some of the stuff I love, she does a great job of infusing static posts
1:32
with reels and then also letting you know what's going on in the area.
1:36
But the biggest thing I want to point out about Megan is that when
1:39
you go to her Linktree or her link in bio, a couple of things happen.
1:43
You can either book her places via Airbnb, or you will see her direct booking site.
1:50
And I want to motivate everyone, when Megan spoke at our event, she talked about
1:54
listening to one of our podcasts while doing the dishes, and then immediately
1:57
it was about direct booking, and she stayed up to the wee hours of the
2:00
morning creating her direct booking site.
2:03
And we are proud to let everyone know she is doing about 30.
2:07
I mean, this was as of the end of 2022, so it might be more now.
2:11
She was doing around 30% of her bookings were direct.
2:14
From taking that one evening and putting this together herself.
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And I just want everybody to take a look at what she's done there.
2:21
And the other thing I love that she's done when she takes people from Instagram
2:25
to her direct booking site, right there, she has her cell phone number.
2:28
She has her email.
2:29
She's like, call me, text me, email me.
2:32
I want to make sure that you book my place.
2:34
I'm sure there's a ton of people that never call her, text her, they email her.
2:38
But just to know that she's there in that capacity, I'm sure is really
2:41
just comforting for the guest and gives them a vote of confidence.
2:45
And also, segue into this episode, I know Megan.
2:50
I believe she was a former teacher and then pivoted into co-hosting or in the
2:53
education field and now co-hosting, but we're going to talk about pivoting today.
2:58
Yes, the power of the pivot.
3:00
But thanks again for using the hashtag.
3:02
Megan, we will see you soon.
3:04
Sarah: Yeah.
3:04
Megan's a rockstar.
3:05
You should just follow her because she's a go-getter and she's got the whole thing.
3:09
Today, Annette and I wanted to chat about some things that were
3:12
inspired by some events happening in our rental management company.
3:16
But then we want to also just talk about you as a human, as an entrepreneur, and
3:21
how it's okay to pivot and it's okay to have done something for a really long
3:25
time and for you to follow your gut and your brain, and make a major change.
3:30
Annette: And we call it just closing the chapter on it.
3:32
So for instance, here is a powerful pivot, close a chapter.
3:37
There have been some properties that were, not to say they were not perfor--
3:41
actually one of them was top performer.
3:43
Ooh, let's put that out there.
3:44
A top performer, but maybe there were some things logistically that the amount
3:48
of time the team, and I don't even want to say it wasn't a fit anymore, but it
3:52
was time to pivot to something else.
3:53
And I think the point of our episode is we want everybody to take a step back.
3:58
This is a really good time of year.
3:59
We have a lot of people in our membership that are doing it.
4:02
Some of them are selling properties, some of them are quitting jobs
4:05
and they're pursuing co-hosting.
4:06
There are some people that are just switching up their calendaring.
4:09
They're switching up their cancellation policy.
4:12
And so really, this is giving you that permission to pivot.
4:15
And what we want to do is invite you today to take a look at all
4:18
the things that you're doing, and would you make that choice again?
4:21
Would you pursue the same thing?
4:23
So let's talk about these specific properties, Sarah, and that evaluation
4:27
of why they were not chosen again.
4:30
Sarah: Yeah.
4:30
So to give you a little bit more context.
4:32
We own properties and we also manage for others.
4:35
Which is why you might like the Thanks For Visiting brand because
4:37
it's never been our pursuit to have as many properties as possible.
4:42
For us, quality of life, quality of stay, and just having the same
4:46
alignment across all of our products, all of the homes that we have in our
4:50
portfolio were really important to us.
4:52
So there's that.
4:54
Annette: What we'd like to say is, these are the things that
4:56
don't fit on the spreadsheet.
4:57
There aren't columns for this on the spreadsheet.
4:59
These aren't on the P&L.
5:01
These are intangibles, but that are so important and probably more
5:05
important than the things that can to fit into the cells of the spreadsheet
5:09
and on the line items on the P&L.
5:10
Sarah: Yeah.
5:10
I don't want to be vague.
5:11
I'm going to dive in here to some more specifics for everyone listening.
5:15
We manage properties for other people.
5:16
My goal as a property manager has always been for all the properties in our
5:20
portfolio to be the ones that I at least own wholly or have part ownership in.
5:25
And so that is my ultimate goal.
5:27
And that is still, if I could choose that goal again, I
5:29
would've continued to choose it.
5:30
That to me is, has been my mission for a really long time.
5:34
Now, it's made sense for me to manage for other people because it's been
5:37
a great opportunity to increase revenue, to get that experience
5:41
of managing for other people.
5:42
I've really enjoyed it
5:43
Annette: And support, having a team.
5:45
Sarah: Yes.
5:46
Annette: That I would say is probably the major.
5:48
Yeah.
5:48
Sarah: And what does that mean?
5:49
So that essentially the properties that I own, that we are managing with
5:53
a team, get managed "for free" because we were able to offset our labor costs
6:02
with the people that we manage for that we don't own the properties on.
6:05
And that revenue more than covers the cost of managing the properties that
6:10
we own, obviously with the amazing help we get from our amazing team, and
6:14
a little bit to pay myself and then a little bit for a profit margin as well.
6:17
So that's all good.
6:19
And that is all spreadsheety stuff.
6:21
Here's what's not spreadsheety, is the 80/20.
6:24
If our team is spending 80% of their time on a property that might perform
6:29
well, but it certainly isn't bringing in all of our revenue, that doesn't
6:32
always fit on a spreadsheet, although that is numbers related liability.
6:36
There were some properties that we were managing where the owner and I couldn't
6:39
get on the same page in terms of safety.
6:41
Annette: Can you talk about a specific there?
6:43
Let our audience know exactly what we're talking about.
6:46
Sarah: Yeah.
6:46
And I do want to protect because I guess my portfolio isn't so big where
6:49
we couldn't maybe figure this out.
6:50
So I do want to protect my owners a little bit too, because what
6:52
they're doing isn't illegal.
6:54
Annette: Right.
6:54
Sarah: I want to make sure I'm very clear about that.
6:55
Annette: And the homes are very-- you would've never
6:56
managed them in the first place.
6:58
Sarah: Exactly.
6:59
Annette: These are just when, as you dial it in.
7:00
Sarah: Yes.
7:01
But for me and for me to be able to sleep at night, there were just some
7:06
things that the properties had that, for example, we would have beds in
7:11
third floors and while there is a way to escape, it didn't make me feel good the
7:16
way that a guest could remove themselves from the home if a fire occurred.
7:19
There was nothing something illegal going on.
7:20
It was perfectly legal.
7:22
Annette: They were bedrooms, they weren't makeshift things.
7:24
Sarah: No.
7:25
And then there were some homes that had amenities like hot tubs, and
7:28
pools, and fire pits that didn't have the protection around them that I
7:33
would prefer if I own the property.
7:35
They weren't illegal.
7:36
They were allowed, they were permitted.
7:37
We were allowed to do it, but it wasn't up to my personal standards.
7:41
Annette: And then there were also, just to add some more color here, there were
7:45
certain other things, for instance, some of these properties, the parking, in the
7:48
beginning, it didn't seem like it was really going to be that big of an issue.
7:51
There was some permits and things like that, but it was pretty stringent.
7:55
There wasn't really ancillary parking.
7:57
There was only one pass.
7:58
And it showed itself to be a little bit more challenging than it
8:00
would've seemed in the beginning.
8:02
Sarah: While we talk about guests reaching out and the inability to
8:06
anticipate their needs and explain to them how to access the property, how
8:10
to park, all those things, it was this never-ending mountain to climb in terms
8:14
of getting the guest in there and having a really good checking experience.
8:17
It was just hard.
8:18
And when I went back to my original mission of managing properties that I
8:22
at least have part ownership in, and the Thanks For Visiting itself, this podcast,
8:26
the YouTube and all of that, Annette and I are having so much fun, we're helping
8:29
so many people, and I needed to take stock in what I could do to free up, and
8:35
I like to call it our, my mental mortgage.
8:37
I had a great team and I honestly they're so amazing that I'm not even
8:40
involved all that much as I used to be like in their day and night.
8:44
And they've really taken a big load off of my shoulders in terms of having
8:47
to be there in person all the time.
8:49
But that doesn't mean the back of my mind that I'm not always troubleshooting
8:53
and trying to figure things out and improve the systems and processes for
8:56
this properties and guest involvement.
8:58
And so I guess what I'm getting to at is ultimately I went back to my mission.
9:01
Would I choose at mission again?
9:02
Yes.
9:02
To manage properties, mostly, that I have at least part ownershipin.
9:06
And any of our listeners out there who might be a client of mine, don't worry.
9:09
I am still here to manage ones that I don't own, but I had to go back and say,
9:12
if I can make 2023 exactly as I wanted, I wanted to make our management portfolio
9:16
more-- just lift some weight off of that.
9:18
Annette: And I wanted to give you kudos, Sarah, that you could call
9:21
any of these clients today, and I am pretty much a 100% sure that they would
9:26
gladly give their property back to you.
9:29
Sarah: Yeah.
9:29
Annette: That's also the thing too Sarah and I were talking about this
9:32
weekend of never quitting something.
9:34
You never quit your job on your worst day.
9:36
You never break up with that person in your biggest knockdown, drag-out fight.
9:41
You never make these huge decisions when you're in that valley.
9:44
And so that's what's been really nice too, is making that decision from a
9:48
good place of closure, not of, had a terrible guest and it was just a
9:52
bad few days in there or something, that wasn't the case there, at all.
9:54
Sarah: And some clients weren't even any of things we discussed.
9:58
It was just one of those things where when I really thought about it and
10:01
just intangibles, I can't even put into words here on the podcast for you
10:04
all, and I was very honest with them.
10:06
I said, "There's nothing wrong with the property, with our relation-- you're
10:09
actually amazing owners and amazing partners in this relationship, but
10:13
I am having some mental mortgage."
10:16
I don't want to say issues, but just I'm paying attention--
10:18
Annette: There was an interest rate hike on that--
10:21
Sarah: There was.
10:22
Annette: I'm sorry.
10:23
Sarah: And for me, simplifying was what I needed to do.
10:26
And I told Annette before we pressed record, I said, even still, I'm
10:30
like, ah, was that the right call?
10:32
Because we did say goodbye to some revenue and I can rest easy knowing that
10:36
I can always either get more clients.
10:40
I figured out how to do that.
10:40
And I can't unlearn that.
10:42
I know how to get clients.
10:43
I know how to be a fantastic property manager.
10:46
I could either call those clients back, ask them, say, "Hey, I am
10:49
actually mentally ready to take on properties again," or get new clients.
10:52
But here's what I know listeners, and here's what I want you to get away with
10:55
this, and I want to pivot a little with the conversation of, what I know is, to
10:59
be a great business owner, I've learned from people who are rockstars, is they
11:02
make decisions fast, and they don't take too long to vacillate on something.
11:06
I'm not saying to be impulsive.
11:08
But if you're revisiting something, there's probably a good reason for it.
11:12
Annette: Thanks for revisiting.
11:13
Sarah: Thanks for revisiting this issue.
11:15
And let's take it back to something that's not co-hosting related
11:18
or property management related.
11:19
I had a career before I moved to Columbus, Ohio, and it is the career that
11:22
I wanted to do since I was three years old because I can open my mouth and have
11:26
an opinion, I want to do that thing.
11:27
And I did it, and I was successful.
11:29
And like Annette said, I was actually at a great point in my
11:31
career when I decided to pivot.
11:33
Because something was just telling me it was time to close the chapter.
11:37
And Annette, I know you have experiences.
11:40
Annette: By the way, Sarah let me know today, she used to do nine shows a week.
11:44
That blew my mind.
11:45
Sarah: Oh yeah, if anyone doesn't know, so I used to be an actor.
11:46
And yeah, so I was her--
11:48
Annette: Nine.
11:48
Sarah: Sometimes you had two show days on the weekends.
11:50
You would do a matinee and an 8:00 PM on Saturday and also on Sunday.
11:53
Annette: Good for you.
11:54
Sarah: And yeah.
11:54
And so, I mean, that was all going great, but I just was like, you know
11:57
what, I want to try something else.
11:59
And the something was pulling at me.
12:01
So right now if you need to hear this, if something is pulling at you and you've
12:05
been vacillating on it, and journaling, and just not making a decision,
12:08
we encourage you to give it a go.
12:10
Annette: Or even if it's just buy the first property.
12:13
Again, it doesn't have to be a home run.
12:15
It can just be a base hit.
12:16
You don't have to have these cash on cash returns and everybody's like,
12:19
I would never think about that.
12:20
There's so many other lessons to be learned.
12:22
You can learn how to navigate the guest.
12:24
You can always sell that property.
12:26
I know we're saying a lot of things in making these decisions easy, but
12:29
sometimes you do just have to go for it.
12:31
And like the podcast, you just got to press record, buy the place.
12:34
AD MARKER
12:35
Sarah: Can we please talk about our first episode, Annette?
12:38
So the first episode where-- they still are the seven steps first guest.
12:41
But our first, interviewing someone, we went to-- we live in Columbus, Ohio.
12:47
Annette made me go to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for some meetup
12:49
because she's obsessed with networking and I love her for it.
12:51
And I was like, yeah, let's go.
12:52
I mean, because I have this adventure.
12:53
And we were staying in a tiny home that I was in someone's backyard.
12:57
Annette: On a slab.
12:58
Sarah: It was good.
12:59
In an alley.
12:59
It was good.
13:00
And those words sound weird, but it was good.
13:02
And we did not have fancy podcast equipment.
13:04
We had Apple provided earbuds.
13:06
Earphones.
13:07
Annette: We were scared ask him, remember?
13:08
We were like, did he remember?
13:10
Is he going to be on the show?
13:11
We all sat in the tiny house.
13:13
Sarah: We literally put my phone in the middle of the coffee table, plugged in
13:16
the earphone so we wouldn't get feedback or whatever, and had them just laying on
13:19
the coffee table, and we talked to him.
13:21
Annette: Mm-hmm.
13:22
Speaking of pivoting though, that gentleman was someone that had been hit
13:26
pretty hard during the 2008 recession and he was a mortgage broker, I think.
13:33
And then that's when his income had decreased.
13:36
And he built that tiny home to make some extra cash.
13:41
And he was like-- man, I think he was making $3,000 a month on that tiny home.
13:45
And what was cool, he was going to take that tiny home and then put it on a
13:47
piece of land that he had bought by a lake, live in the tiny home, while he
13:51
built his primary home there, and he was going to rent out the tiny home again.
13:55
He had a plan.
13:56
But anyways, he was pivoting with a lot of things too.
13:58
And he started-- the tiny home was great.
14:00
I mean, definitely he built it, you could tell, but it was good.
14:03
Sarah: And this leads me to just pivoting the conversation a little bit more.
14:06
So number one, the podcast.
14:07
Annette and I wanted to start a podcast.
14:09
We had never been podcasters before, but we just did it.
14:12
Annette: Oh, I was dabbling.
14:13
Sarah: Annette dabbled and I used to be an actor, so I'm no stranger to the mic.
14:18
So that's, to be fair, yes.
14:19
But still, we were new to each other, and we were new to asking people
14:21
to be a part of our crazy world.
14:23
Annette: Oh, we were nervous.
14:24
Sarah: You were very nervous.
14:25
But here's also what you can do if you're right now facing a decision.
14:28
It doesn't even have to be a short term rental related decision, but
14:31
what Annette and I often do is really think about worst case scenario.
14:34
And if you're listening to this podcast and you're in real estate, you are
14:38
most likely in a position of having some life experience that you can
14:43
leverage to offset any hiccup that might happen if and when you decide
14:47
to pivot and it doesn't go as planned.
14:49
Because we can't promise that it didn't go as planned.
14:53
COVID hit and it was just like, what is going on?
14:55
And lot of tough things happen then, but you have to just rely on yourself,
14:59
I think, to know that your instincts are going to kick in and you're going
15:01
to navigate your way through it.
15:03
And what you find on the other side of that decision is sometimes the best.
15:07
You're like, oh my gosh.
15:08
I didn't know it, but at the time, this is the most amazing
15:10
thing that could happen to me.
15:11
Annette: Yeah.
15:12
And I want to offer this to everybody, because this, I feel
15:15
like the short term rental world is like just inundated with this.
15:18
Not everything has to be this extreme profit or any profit.
15:23
You could literally host to just cover your mortgage.
15:27
That's fine.
15:28
You could even host and maybe not even make that much money.
15:31
Let's say it's your primary home or maybe it's your second home, and
15:33
you don't need to make that money.
15:34
When we started our podcast, for instance, there is no money
15:37
for years and years and years.
15:38
Not everything that you do, including hosting, has to have
15:42
this amazing payout monthly.
15:45
Your why can be so many different things.
15:48
And I just think that that's something that we get really
15:50
caught up in is the profits.
15:52
Especially when people are talking about short term rentals and real
15:54
estate, because that's like the thing that gets touted the most,
15:57
is three x, what a short term is.
16:00
Sarah: Well, you get afraid to make that first move, to run to first base
16:03
and then to take it to second base.
16:05
And I'm talking about goals here, and not other things.
16:07
But you get so afraid to make a mistake, or at least I do sometimes,
16:11
that you never take that first step.
16:13
And my goodness, if I haven't taken the first step in a few things in the past
16:16
five years of my life, I mean, I love where I'm at right now and it's been
16:19
a really high-- it's been a mountain.
16:22
But it's been great too.
16:23
Annette: And I also want to bring up too letting go some of the clients.
16:27
I let go of a person that I originally had started hosting with.
16:30
He's now hosting like 50 properties or something.
16:32
But I want to say there were so many mistakes in the beginning too.
16:34
We're going to work on some new YouTube videos of the first
16:37
properties weren't in LLC.
16:39
I was mingling.
16:40
I didn't know about having all these separate bank accounts
16:43
and I was just doing the thing.
16:46
And so also don't get analysis paralysis and worried about if you're making
16:51
some missteps, because I can let perfectionism sometimes take over,
16:54
and so you got to get going with it.
16:57
But going back to what Sarah-- circling back to the very beginning, is we just
17:01
want everybody to know your numbers because Sarah and I do love numbers.
17:04
We love talking about profit, we love talking about financial goals.
17:08
But we are also very honest in putting those other line items that
17:12
might not be on that P&L, might not be found on that spreadsheet.
17:16
Sarah: And might I add, that thing can be a gut check.
17:19
I really do believe it's okay to say I don't know what it is.
17:22
My gut is telling me to do X, Y, Z.
17:25
Annette: Or not to.
17:26
Sarah: Or not to do X, Y, Z.
17:27
And even if you can't formulate into words what that is, obviously you don't want to
17:31
navigate your entire life on gut feelings, but if there's just something telling
17:35
you to do it, which is what happened with me changing my portfolio for 2023.
17:39
I just had to listen to myself.
17:40
I'm a smart person.
17:41
I've made mostly decent decisions in my life and I have to see what's
17:44
on the other side of this decision.
17:45
Annette: Yes.
17:46
And we love that.
17:47
So if you're listening and you have anything like this, please email us.
17:51
Let us know if you've pivoted to a property, away from a property, away from
17:56
maybe helping someone host or not host.
17:58
Let us know that.
17:59
Share your stories with us.
18:00
You can also go to our website where we have our Thanks For Visiting hosting
18:04
hotline there and let us know, but we just wanted to talk about that today because
18:07
there is a lot of chatter in social media about just more money, more money, more
18:13
money, and bringing on more clients or buying more properties all the time.
18:16
And it doesn't have to be that way.
18:18
I just know all your listeners out there, over the years, we understand,
18:21
we know who you and we love who you are, but we thought, as I was just chatting
18:27
with Annette about the changes that I'm making in my life and I was like,
18:30
I think our listeners need to hear.
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Because every day there are people like, well, why don't you just do more?
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Why would you do that?
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You already have this set up.
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So we're going to also let you know it doesn't come without opinions flying in.
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There are so many people like, why don't you own more properties?
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Why don't you have more of this?
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Why don't you own in all these other states?
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Or why don't you remote?
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And it's just that's not what we do right now.
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And.
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It's also about quieting the noise.
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So when you're pivoting or when you're just making decisions, you're
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going to have to quiet the noise.
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Sarah: You are going to have to quiet the noise, and you're going to be confident
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in who you are, what you want to do.
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Even if you're like, I don't even know what I want to do next, but I do know
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that I need to simplify right now, and this is what's important to me right now.
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Because you can always pivot back.
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You can always go back.
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But making decisions quickly, I can tell you on this side of things has been a
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really great tip that I've gotten from many a podcasts and business coaches.
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And they're just right.
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Even with the decision, there are no wrong decisions.
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Failing fast.
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There's all these great things.
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Because man, the things you learn when you get back out.
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Annette: Success is on the pile top of all the failures.
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Sarah: Oh, my God.
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You should see your face right now, I'm thinking about all the fears.
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Annette: All right.
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But yeah, reach out to us.
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Let us know.
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Let's do this thing.
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Whatever it is that you want to do or not do.
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Sarah: Yeah.
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And with that, my name is Sarah Karakaian.
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Annette: I'm Annette Grant, and together we are--
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Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks For Visiting.
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Sarah: We'll talk to you next time.