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[00:00:00] Amy: Hey, this is Amy Corbett, and we are here with the glamorous and wonderful Sarah Karakaian whom you may know from Thanks for Visiting. But we’re here to talk about co-hosting because some of you may not know that Sarah owns a boutique short-term rental co-hosting business named–

[00:00:24] Sarah: Stay Awhile Hosting Co.

[00:00:25] Amy: Stay Awhile Hosting Co. Thank you for giving your time to us, Sarah.

[00:00:30] Sarah: I am so excited.

[00:00:32] Amy: It’s very fun to be on this side of the microphone interviewing you. And a little daunting, I must say.

[00:00:39] Sarah: This is going to be fun.

[00:00:40] Amy: It is.

[00:00:41] Sarah: I’m an open book. 

[00:00:42] Amy: Okay. 

[00:00:43] Sarah: And if I need to close a chapter on you all, I’ll let you know.

[00:00:47] Amy: Sounds good. We’re going to get deep and dirty here. Okay. So give us your background. How did co-hosting come about for you?

[00:00:58] Sarah: Co-hosting was quite an accident for me. It wasn’t an accident for you?

[00:01:03] Amy: It just fell in my lap. Yeah.

[00:01:05] Sarah: Same. So I moved from New York City to Columbus, Ohio, to start fresh with life, make life easier. And Nick and I, my husband and I, knew we wanted to continue our short-term rental journey. We didn’t really know exactly what that meant, but we know we wanted to continue with it, and we wanted less red tape than we were getting in New York.

[00:01:28] We got to Columbus, and I think my whole plan was, it’s always been, to acquire property that we own, turn them into short-term rentals, and self-manage. And I was sharing that on Instagram via my Instagram stories back in 2016, ’17, something like that. And Christine Kimball DM’d me, and she was like, hey, would you produce for other people?

[00:01:56] And I had never really thought about that. I started hosting in 2012, but I knew that their co-hosts exist and things like that, but my co-host was my husband, so we could share visibility into our business. And so I said, yeah, I think I could. And she onboarded our property with me. I learned a ton, and I just took the same systems that I was doing for myself and made sure they worked with her. I asked my attorney a ton of questions, but that’s really the start of it all.

[00:02:30] Amy: That’s awesome. And then at what point when you’re hosting for one person do you go, oh, I could do this again? Did somebody come to you for the next one?

[00:02:41] Sarah: Yes. Here’s what I will tell you, and obviously, listeners who are listening right now are interested in co-hosting. Property management, co-hosting from someone who has their stuff together and who treats their clients like partners and not a number are hard to find.

[00:02:58] Amy: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:59] Sarah: So when word got out that I was willing to work with other owners and treat their properties like I would treat my own, saying no is now more common than saying yes. Yeah. Again, once you just talk about it and have one or two clients who also share the good news that you’re good at what you do, it is like wildfire.

[00:03:22] Amy: Yeah. They’re going to market you even more than you have to do it yourself. So when did you give it a name? When did you come up with Stay Awhile Hosting Co.?s

[00:03:32] Sarah: When I moved to Columbus, we knew we wanted to continue our short-term rental journey, but we didn’t have it mapped out. Like, okay, I’m going to start a co-hosting company, property management company. I want to get it to a 100 properties by this day. We didn’t have any of that. 

[00:03:44] We were still flipping houses, and my husband and I used to do DIY YouTube videos, the home improvement YouTube videos, and we were bloggers, so that was our main focus. And so I think we operated under Nestors, which is our umbrella brand for all that stuff until maybe 2018.

[00:04:08] I had, I think probably six, or seven, or eight owners that I was working with, and I wanted to really brand what we were doing. I also became a licensed real estate agent. And to be a property manager, there were certain things that we had to do in order to do that legally.

[00:04:25] Amy: Come under a broker.

[00:04:27] Sarah: Correct. And that website had to have my broker’s logo larger than my own, that whole thing, fair housing, all that stuff. So I just figured it was easier to create a name that is under Nestor. So it’s doing business as Stay Awhile Hosting Co, and worked with our attorney to develop all of that and really started to give what we were doing in identity, which makes decisions easier. It’s beyond logos and colors.

[00:04:52] It’s like, what do we stand for? What do we not stand for? What kind of properties do I want to manage? What don’t we want to manage? Who are our best partners? Who aren’t? And you put it all on your website. That is separate from everything else that you’re doing, the flips, the floor plans, the DIY home improvement videos. And it just becomes so much easier to build that identity.

[00:05:11] Amy: Yeah. What were some of those core values that you knew this is going to be a brand standard for me?

[00:05:18] Sarah: Yes. So we knew that we wanted spaces that were safe and legal. If an owner told me that they were grandfathered in anything, I would say, not a good fit for us. Beautiful spaces. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? So we would put on different lenses every time we would come to a property and see if it was “beautiful”.

[00:05:45] But really just put together, had an identity, thoughtful, cared for, those sorts of things. Of course, there are certain brand standards that we have to abide by that I’m happy to abide by, which is, everyone belongs, and we treat every single guest the exact same way. So all of our rules for our properties are incredibly dialed in, so no one feels like we’re creating a rule just to single them out– those sorts of things too. It’s really just consistency as well.

[00:06:17] Amy: Right, right. And it all comes under this umbrella of Stay Awhile Hosting Co.  And how many properties are you guys up to now?

[00:06:27] Sarah: So this might be the anti story that most of the people you’re going to interview share, but we were up to 50, 50 some, 50, 55, and we’re down to 25. 

[00:06:40] Amy: Okay. 

[00:06:40] Sarah: Purposefully.

[00:06:41] Amy: Yeah. Tell us about that.

[00:06:43] Sarah: Yeah. So last year, we did a deep dive into the numbers of all the properties. And so not only profit margins that certain properties were in, but we also looked at maintenance tasks and how much time we were spending attending to those things. And then I also took things that you really couldn’t fit on a spreadsheet, which was where my life was going. 

[00:07:01] And Annette and I have this business, Thanks for Visiting, where we are– it’s important to us that we’re practitioners, but I was honest with myself that I don’t want to grow big just for the sake of growing big. I want to be very purposeful so that we can continue to be practitioners but also have a work-life balance that was necessary when you’re doing online content. This is all the time, and it’s so much. And also, as you know, property management is all the time.

[00:07:33] Amy: Yeah. This was going to be my next question, is how do you juggle Stay Awhile Hosting Co with Thanks for Visiting and still have time to sleep?

[00:07:42] Sarah: That’s a question that I don’t know that I have an answer to, but I can tell you what I’m trying. One of those was that audit last year. And we figured out the properties that were making us 20% of our revenue but costing us 80% of our time, and we off-boarded them. And then the properties that were really lovely to take care for, but they weren’t a one-off one-bedroom that was separate from all the rest of them. You know what I mean? 

[00:08:10] The revenue we were getting from that one owner unfortunately didn’t support where we were going, which was really maximizing our team’s efficiency and my efficiency and also putting myself first. So last year, to be completely honest, I had to share with those owners that some of these people I was off-boarding, not because anything’s sswrong.

[00:08:33] It’s just because I had to make a decision for myself to either scale to the next 50, probably to about 100. I believe there are sweet spots in co-hosting. I believe there are points where this is a sweet spot for where our operations are at and what our profit margin’s on. And then to get to that next spot, your profit margin might dip while you’re growing.

[00:08:54] And I had to ask myself if I was willing to do that, if that excited me. And it didn’t. I was still able to learn, try out technology, evolve, tweak our practices and our operations, and be involved in this whole industry because of Thanks for Visiting without scaling to higher numbers.

[00:09:16] Amy: Right. I think it’s so great that, as you’re providing all of this educational content and leveling up the industry of hosting, you’re still practicing it. You’re still hosting these 25 properties. And that is a lot. Most hosts listening here probably aren’t up to that. And so we’re looking at you and going, how does she do it all? It is amazing. Obviously the revenue played a part with which properties you decided to keep, but why else did you keep the 25 that you have?

[00:09:56] Sarah: Yeah. So some of them were location proximity. And actually, I can share with you this. So when we moved to Columbus, like I said, I didn’t know that I was going to co-host and all those things, but I did know that I wanted to own real estate. So building wealth through real estate has always been my transition out of my first career, which was performing, into this new career.

[00:10:19] Amy: Okay, wait. 

[00:10:19] Sarah: That’s a whole other– 

[00:10:21] Amy: Do you know that Sarah is Broadway? Sarah is Broadway.

[00:10:27] Sarah: Sarah is Broadway. Wait, will you tell Broadway that? You’re like, you’re missing your whole identity. Yeah. So I wanted to build wealth, and I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so that was very important to me. I found myself with these 50 properties, and you look at yourself sometimes, and you’re like, what am I doing?

[00:10:44] My goal was to buy more properties that I own. Now, you might be listening out there, and that may not be your goal. Your goal really might be to grow the best, biggest, and most efficient co-hosting business out there. And to you, I say, good luck. And that is amazing. And you can do that. That was never my goal.

[00:11:03] I love managing for others because you learn so much from other investors and how they manage their business, what’s important to them. But for my husband and I, I wanted to dedicate my time back to finding more properties for us too. Again, for other properties, we would let go of the one-off one-bedroom apartments that weren’t a part of a larger complex, or if they were not performing, or if the owner and I weren’t aligned.

[00:11:30] I’ve talked about that on the Thanks for Visiting podcast, that there was just owners who didn’t want to dial in certain safety measures. Maybe it wasn’t code, but it was the right thing to do, things like that. Anyway, I also wanted to make sure when we did scale back down, that I still could support the team that I had. 

[00:11:50] So profit for us isn’t what I pay myself. I also pay myself, and then I want to be left over with a profit margin because that’s just the health of a business. You don’t want to be riding on a razor-thin profit margin because then losing one property could be detrimental. So we could focus more time on growing Thanks for Visiting because we can serve even more people and hosts that way. My husband and I and Annette and I have time to find properties that we can buy and self-manage.

[00:12:18] Amy: Which was your original dream, original goal. Coming back to that full-circle, and co-hosting gets you towards that dream. Yeah.

[00:12:30] So let’s talk about your team. Who do you have? What do they do? And what are you doing in Stay Awhile Hosting Co.?

[00:12:38] Sarah: I’m trying to work on it, not in it. Not as little as possible. I don’t mean that to say that I’m sitting on the couch watching TV, but I really want to be a part of the strategy. So we have a team of, I think, six people, and they range from reservationists to revenue management and strategy to the person who buys all of our products for us, inspectors. 

[00:13:14] And in addition to those six people, we have a cleaning team. We’ve gone back to having maintenance being 1099 vendors because we could no longer support a part-time handyperson. Yeah.

[00:13:30] Amy: So the six are employees.

[00:13:33] Sarah: Yes. Yeah.

[00:13:35] Amy: And then what does that leave your part in?

[00:13:38] Sarah: Yeah, so strategy. So I meet with the woman who helps us buy our products. Okay. Are there better prices elsewhere? How are the products actually working within the building? Have we reevaluated? Down to the toilet paper and the kind of toothpaste we get, and looking at the reviews and conversations and involving our inspectors.

[00:13:58] So how is the buying department working out? How is the audit of the supply area working out? Can we approve of some [Inaudible]? Are you running to Target too much? Are you running to the dollar store? I don’t want to do that. To a revenue management strategy meetings that we have with Colleen. What is our three months out looking like?

[00:14:17] How did the reports go out to the owners, and are they happy? So just with that overarching, how’s everyone doing? Can I help you improve anything? Down to– I’m not going to lie. A month ago, we let a cleaning company go, and I had the opportunity to hire a third party while we found someone more permanent. 

[00:14:37] And as I was interviewing these third party cleaners, I was like, I don’t trust any of people. So my husband and I cleaned for week. And it was actually a humbling experience, but also I leaned some other ways to improve. 

[00:14:54] Amy: And you remember going back to the beginnings.

[00:14:57] Sarah: Yes. There’s one thing. When your cleaning team tells you, hey, this isn’t working great, and you’re like, they’re just complaining again, or whatever, when you experience it yourself, especially as a boutique company, that is very important to us. 

[00:15:11] Mm-hmm Even when we were up to 50, even at that point, I knew that I never wanted to get any bigger, but being boutique, that’s my favorite part, is making sure everything is incredibly dialed in and the details are all there. And so taking that week to put yourself in, whether it’s the inspector’s shoes, the reservationer’s shoes, every in a while, as a business owner, I think it’s good. Yeah.

[00:15:36] Amy: Yeah. And having your eyes on your own property. Sometimes we can get in the weeds of all the other aspects of our business, but to come and see what’s actually happening on site is so valuable.

[00:15:50] Sarah: Yes.

[00:15:53] Amy: Let’s talk operations because, if you didn’t know, Sarah is obsessed with operations, and she’s amazing. We can call you the queen of operations.

[00:16:05] Sarah: I would love that. 

[00:16:07] Amy: This was a shocking revelation to me when I first was getting to know you and first in HBMM, our community, to know that you were so into operations. I never expected that. So let’s talk just quickly. I’m going to just throw out some topics, and you can tell us maybe some tips or what you’re doing. All right, so let’s talk laundry. Offsite, onsite, what’s happening?

[00:16:39] Sarah: Yes. We are combo. I’ll say that. So some buildings, because we’re co-hosting– so listeners, you’re out there, whether you’re started or you’re going to, every property is a snowflake, every owner is a snowflake, and every property’s expense threshold is a snowflake. 

[00:17:00] So some properties, it makes sense to take the laundry offsite and have it done– it gets all done professionally, but have it done by a third-party company that can fold it and bring it back, and what have you. There are some properties where that’s just not a possibility.

[00:17:14] So we bring actually in-house laundry professionals with professional processes in terms of soaps and how things get cleaned, how they get packaged up and put away. So you can take the same practices for all of your properties and have that same brand standard, if that makes sense. But whether we engage in a third-party or we do it in-building, it just depends. So we do both.

[00:17:42] Amy: I like that. Supplies.

[00:17:45] Sarah: Supplies. We have a combination of leveraging Amazon Business accounts, Costco Wholesale. One of my favorite tips that we share a lot on Thanks for Visiting Instagram is a volume specialist at Costco. 

[00:18:04] So actually, I got this tip years ago from a Costco manager, but Costco, and I’m sure Sam’s Club and those other big warehouses, if you’re a small business and you buy your business supplies from them, you can create your own PDF of all the supplies that you need for your business. 

[00:18:21] And so for us co-hosts, you can do it by house, by address. Create these PDFs, and then fill them out, whether you do it monthly, or quarterly, or bi weekly, whatever that is for you. Email it to them. Their credit card’s on file. They will pull it for you. They will leave it at the front of the warehouse for you. And you can either go pick it up, or you can have a tasker come pick it up and deliver it to you. But having someone pull all those items from the shelves and have it paid for individually– you know what I mean?

[00:18:49] Amy: Yeah. So good. Do you do that monthly? And you said you have a volume specialist. Is that the person that’s in charge of this?

[00:19:00] Sarah: The volume specialist tip is a Costco worker. There is someone at Costco dedicated to small business operations and purchasing. So you can work with them to do these things. Yes, we have in-house. We call her our buyer. So she will buy all of our supplies for us. It is our goal to do it quarterly. 

[00:19:22] I’m going to use the word goal because we don’t always hit that goal. If you don’t think there are one-offs, we’re like, we were at par, and this was our par for three months, and now all of a sudden, whatever that is, 30 whatever of toilet paper isn’t enough or some guests. You know what I mean? So it’s not an exact science.

[00:19:40] Amy: Now you just used the word par, which is? 

[00:19:43] Sarah: Yes. Par level. 

[00:19:44] Amy: A hotel industry word. Can you quickly give us a–

[00:19:49] Sarah: Yes. So when I was an actor in New York, I worked in restaurants and hotels. And I think that’s where I fell in love with operations. Anyone out there, if you’ve ever been a bartender or a server, you might be getting an order at this table, but you know that you have to go from this table to where you place the order, the computer.

[00:20:12] And you have to think about all the things that you need to do to maximize your time from point A to point C. That’s my favorite thing to do, is how can I maximize these next five minutes to ultimate whatever? So any par level is knowing how much you need of something for a certain period of time.

[00:20:32] You can learn this with time if you track things. So let’s say you go to Costco and buy, I don’t know, five gallons of olive oil because you supply olive oil at your rentals, and that will last you six months. Okay. So then you always want to have a certain level of olive oil in your supply area.

[00:20:55] And once you dip below it, that is a red flag that soon you’re going to be out of it. So we will go into our supply closets, and we will take inventory. And if we are below par on any of our inventory items, and hopefully this is happening right about that two and a half month mark, we’re about to go shopping again. It just makes it easier.

[00:21:16] Amy: And is the cleaner communicating that? Is that an inspector that’s checking? 

[00:21:21] Sarah: Our inspector does that. 

[00:21:22] Amy: Is also an auditor for supplies. 

[00:21:24] Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:21:27] Amy: Okay. That makes sense. What about tech?

[00:21:31] Sarah: Tech. What’s my techstack? 

[00:21:33] Amy: Yeah. We know you love Breezeway.

[00:21:35] Sarah: That might be my favorite.

[00:21:37] Amy: We know you love Hostfully. 

[00:21:39] Sarah: I use Hostfully. Yeah.

[00:21:40] Amy: What else keeps you and your team on track? 

[00:21:44] Sarah: Yes. For our internal team communication, there’s a lot of ways to communicate. You could use Slack. You can use WhatsApp. We like Voxer. So Voxer is a walkie talkie. The reason why I like it is because when you get pinged by Voxer, it’s a different sound.

[00:22:00] You can change your notifications with the click of a button, so if you’re off duty, you can go to mentions only or just not at all. And you can just speak into it. I think today’s “co-host property manager” is different than the older-school vacation rental management, where we’re on our feet a lot. 

[00:22:24] Even as owner, I am not at my computer all the time. So if I want to communicate with my team, just to know who’s on duty and get ahold of them with my voice is so much easier than typing something out.

[00:22:36] Amy: Yeah, totally on the go. We’ve got to be able to do it, especially when we’re hopping potentially property to property.

[00:22:44] Sarah: Yeah. Or if you’re driving. I don’t want them like to do anything while they’re actually driving, but if you’re at a stoplight and you want to Voxer someone a question, I just think it’s so much easier than typing it out. You can also type out things there. I’m going to use things that aren’t short-term related. We also use Asana.

[00:23:05] Amy: We do too.

[00:23:06] Sarah: And that is also one of my favorites.

[00:23:08] Amy: It is so great. What do you guys use it for? 

[00:23:18] Sarah: We handle our pet fees a little differently than most people. So if a guest is telling us they’re bringing a pet, we’ll mark it in there, in Asana. We manage our lost and found in Asana, so tracking. We found something. We notified the guest. We follow it up with the guest.

[00:23:36] The guest gave us their address. We need to mail it back. You know what I mean? All the steps that it takes to get something from point A to point B happens in Asana, unless it’s maintenance, cleaning, or inspection-related, then we keep all that stuff in Breezeway.

[00:23:50] Amy: Got you. And what’s so great about Asana is that you can assign tasks to people on your team. It sends them the notification. They’re able to check when it’s complete, and the whole team is able to keep– 

[00:24:02] Sarah: See what’s going on. 

[00:24:03] Amy: Together. .Yes, for sure. 

[00:24:06] Okay. Operations, we always hear, you need to tighten your systems and processes and streamline. What does that actually mean? What are some of these systems and processes that we as co-hosts need to have in place? What does tightening it up look like?

[00:24:27] Sarah: That’s a huge question. The first thing that pops to mind is when you’re a co-host, you are helping someone else manage a giant asset. My favorite way to consider myself is yes, property manager. Yes, co-host, but I’m an asset manager. I’m managing someone’s asset. It’s very important. 

[00:24:50] So for co-hosts, you dial in your process for your preventative maintenance and when things pop up so you can track it. What is your process for making sure that the HVAC system is– we don’t wait for things to happen. We’re on top of it every year. The smoke detectors, the air conditioning units, the drains. You don’t want to wait till a guest tells you that the drain is clogged. You want to have the preventative maintenance to have the drains cleaned proactively. 

[00:25:19] And so those systems need to be tightened if you’re waiting for things to happen to react to them. And I think that’s one of the first lessons you learn as a co-host if you’re not already. In the property management world, you develop that with time. So if you haven’t started yet, be on top of that. Already know all the things that you need to make a house hum so that a guest doesn’t have to notify you.

[00:25:44] Also to look out for things where you’re taking too many steps to get to an outcome. So if you’re repeating things, or if your team is asking everyone constantly for an update. Okay. We need visibility to whatever this is. Maybe it might be owner communication. Hey, did you reach out to Mr. Smith? And you notice that your team is always asking, did you reach out to Mrs. Connor? Whatever that is. 

[00:26:13] Okay. I need visibility because we’re wasting time asking our team members about what’s going on. So how can we implement a CRM to where we can see who last communicated with that owner. So just knowing when you’re taking too many steps. It’s like when you go on Google Maps and you see there’s a lot of ways to get to that destination, but some take 20 minutes and some take 10.

[00:26:39] Amy: That’s a good analogy.

[00:26:40] Sarah: And so the 10 is usually the highway because you’re skipping a bunch of back streets. How can you and your team skip a bunch of back streets so that you can get to that destination a little bit faster? Whether that’s for your guest, for your owner, just for your team’s happiness, for your wallet. All those things mean the more you can optimize time and efficiencies, the better your business is going to run.

[00:27:01] Amy: Yeah, for sure. This is why you are the queen of operations. 

[00:27:05] So you mentioned your communication with owners. What does that look like? How much are your owners hands off? Are they involved? Does that look different for each owner? 

[00:27:17] Sarah: This is why I think you’re amazing in what you do. And listeners, I don’t know if Amy’s given any visibility into her business yet, but you’re incredibly flexible with meeting your owners where they’re at. And that’s important to you and your business. 

[00:27:33] For where I’m at with my business, I learned that I need an owner who is not involved at all. I’m trying to think of how to say this correctly without sounding terrible, but they cannot be involved. You cannot be a part of the guest communication process. We are full service, and that is it.

[00:27:54] Amy: So you are interested in having maybe more of an investor who has a property, and they just need someone that they can trust who’s going to come in, take it, and they don’t have to worry about it.

[00:28:10] Sarah: Yes. It is not uncommon. Actually, we look at our operations and our systems. If our owners are reaching out to us more than twice a month, something’s not going well there because we are so proactive in terms of sharing with them how their month went, what their occupancy was, how it compares to last year. Did it reach their goals? 

[00:28:32] Here are the maintenance tasks that we’re going to get ahead of. Here’s the maintenance task that popped up. Literally, we give them all the things that happen in a snapshot so they don’t have to ask us any questions. So we can just say, so dialed in into our systems that they have everything in their inbox before they can even ask for it. And that’s why we like it.

[00:28:49] Amy: Wow. Yeah. That’s great. It’s so different from my co-hosting business, but that’s the beauty of it, right?

[00:28:57] Sarah: Yes.

[00:28:58] Amy: We can map out what works best for us and what feels like a fit for what we want to create. and do your owners know that they have Sarah Karakaian as their property manager? 

[00:29:15] Sarah: A couple of our owners follow Thanks for Visiting. I think they know. I also wonder if they’re thinking like, how does she actually have time to manage our properties? That’s because we have amazing people on our team. But actually, a couple of our owners probably have no idea that I’m a short-term rental nerd, and they probably don’t really care.

[00:29:33] Our owners also have to care about five-star reviews. We do a lot of tweaking, and that means some extra money out of every monthly revenue, and they know that that’s important to us. You know what I mean? 

[00:29:46] Amy: Right. Yeah. How much do you talk to your owners about having hospitality be a value for them too? This isn’t just about your profit margin, but to get that, we’re going to need to invest in bringing a guest experience.

[00:30:03] Sarah: That goes back to when we started Stay Awhile Hosting Co. It’s its own brand and identity and our onboarding process. And in our contract, we let them know that if a guest asks for an extra throw blanket and one wasn’t enough, whatever the standards are, we will go get that other throw blanket.

[00:30:21] here um, in Columbus, Ohio, one of the big on restaurant entrepreneurs here is Karen Mitchell, and he has a book. And it’s, yes is the answer. What is the question? And so we really tried to operate under that same mindset. And if our owners love that about us, then we’re a good fit.

[00:30:39] But they also don’t want to be bogged down by being involved all the time. Then we’re a good fit. We have a threshold. If the expense is under 400. And it’s going to make a guest happy, we already have permission to do it from the get go.

[00:30:51] Amy: Love that. And so they’re on board. You said there’s a contract, which all good c- hosts will have with their clients. But what else do you have before the signing of the contract?

[00:31:06] Sarah: A conversation. Just as much as me interviewing the potential owner as is the owner of course interviewing me and having questions. And sometimes owners don’t ask the questions they should ask me. 

[00:31:19] Amy: Righty.

[00:31:20] Sarah: And I will tell them that and say, you haven’t asked me this, this, or this, and it’s important we talk about those things and what that threshold is in terms of, spend, who’s in charge when this situation happens under the property. Let’s say the HVAC system goes out. There are co-hosts or property managers out there who would need to get the owner involved at that point or not.

[00:31:47] What happens if I had to make a trip after our inspector checked our checklist, the guest wants something extra? We are, yes is the answer. What is the question? But now our team has to leave their home after 5 o’clock to go out and attend to them. That’s a trip fee that comes out of the revenue of the property.

[00:32:05] Are you okay with that? You know what I mean? So those sorts of questions. Because if that puts them off guard, they’re like, does the guest really need a wine key at 8:00 PM? And it’s like, well, if we say no to them and wait till tomorrow, that could affect our review and, that could absolutely affect your bottom line. And that’s just not the kind of company we are. So they have to be okay with those. We talk about those sorts of things before we even get the contract out to them.

[00:32:29] Amy: Is this an in-person sitting in the same room? Is this a zoom call? Is this a phone call?

[00:32:35] Sarah: I think it’s a really important decision for an owner. Especially owners that are attracted to companies like mine, full service, a lot of trust, I wouldn’t be shocked, listeners, if someone wanted to meet you in person or set aside an entire hour to connect maybe twice, maybe three times. This is a big deal. You are managing something that, for most of them, I would say, over $200,000 plus. 

[00:33:06] Amy: Right.

[00:33:06] Sarah: It’s a big decision.

[00:33:07] Amy: That’s a lot of trust for someone to hand over to you as a co-host.

[00:33:12] Sarah: Yes. And a lot can happen in two to three months of trusting a company to watch after a property, and they make a bad decision. That could be a lot of money out of their pocket to get it. 

[00:33:26] Amy: Yeah.

[00:33:26] Sarah: I’ll meet them wherever they’re at, Zoom, coffee, phone call, whatever they’re comfortable with. 

[00:33:33] Amy: What challenges have you faced with Stay Awhile Hosting Co. over the years?

[00:33:39] Sarah: I think, honestly, the biggest challenge is the challenge I have with myself and deciding– Amy, you and I just had this conversation about other people who have so many doors.

[00:33:52] Amy: Right.

[00:33:54] Sarah: To this day, it gets to me, like, how can I represent short-term rental education and not have the biggest property management company out there?

[00:34:05] Amy: The largest portfolio.

[00:34:06] Sarah: How can I not. I have to, don’t I? Isn’t what I have to do? And to know and be confident in what this business has to do for me and my family, that is a constant struggle. Even when I’ve decided on whatever I’ve decided on, like right now, where we’re at, it’s like, is that the right decision? 

[00:34:26] Amy: Second guessing.

[00:34:27] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:34:28] Amy: Yeah. But you’re staying true to yourself, and you’re staying true to your own dream of owning real estate. And again, 25 properties is no joke. 

[00:34:38] Sarah: It’s not nothing. It’s not nothing. But at the same time, in the world of– and I’m not saying this to have people feel like 25 is nothing, or 10 is nothing, or 5 is nothing, but there are companies out there who can manage multiple hundreds, and it can be a lot of fun. And it’s a space of growth that can be incredibly challenging.

[00:35:02] But this is why you asked me, what are our core values? And with Stay Awhile Hosting Co., it’s not only the core values of how the guests interact with your business and your owners, but also you yourself. And to remember that we wanted Stay Awhile to be a majority properties we had equity ownership in.

[00:35:21] I have to go back to that all the time whenever I get a really juicy email from someone who’s like, I have this beautiful property. Do you want to manage it? And I’m like, oh my God, I love that neighborhood, or the house is so cute. But then, like right now, we have a really awesome idea to build something, to create something that isn’t common, and we’re looking for land, and buying land is not my forte.

[00:35:44] I’ll buy an old house all day and fix it up, but buying land is not my forte. And so I have to remember saying no to that cute cottage means I’m saying yes to figuring out how to buy this piece of land and do something different and challenge myself. And I had to go back to my mission and my why so that you don’t get lost in what everyone else wants you to do. 

[00:36:04] Amy: Yes. If it’s not a hell yes, it needs to be a no.

[00:36:07] Sarah: And you know what? You said that, I forget what we were talking about, but I was like– and I use that now too, not only for myself. Whenever a friend calls me, and they’re vacillating, I’m like, is this a hell yes. And they’re like, well, no. And I’m like, then it needs to be a no. At least no for now.

[00:36:26] Amy: So my next question is then, it sounds like you’re good with 25, or what’s next for Stay Awhile Hosting Co.? Do you feel like that’s enough on your plate? Would you grow? Are you open? Are you wanting to–

[00:36:41] Sarah: Descale. 

[00:36:43] Amy: What’s the word? 

[00:36:44] Sarah: I know descale. Because you then, do you descale? It sounds like I’m descaling Keurig machines, gives me eye twitches. . Honestly, Amy, I don’t know because we do have our own duplex coming on into our program that we own fully. I told you we’re shopping for this land. If this happens, this next project happens, it’s going to definitely change all of our– my whole set schedule is going to change.

[00:37:13] And so when that happens, it’s like– yeah. So right now we’re going to stay exactly where we’re at. We have a good system. I know how many inspectors I need. I know how many cleaners I need. I know how many reservations. You know what I mean? I know these numbers. If someone moves on to greener pastures, not a problem.

[00:37:29] I know exactly how to hire. You know what I mean? So nothing is going to be out of the norm for a moment because we’re looking at changing things up and shaking things up. And for me, that’s what I need to happen.

[00:37:41] Amy: Yeah, that’s great. We only have a few minutes left. What advice would you give to our listeners who are thinking about hosting?

[00:37:53] Sarah: Yeah, I get on my horse every day at Thanks for Visiting, but I’ll get on that one more time, is just to not take this job lightly. I don’t care what you call yourself. I don’t care about any of that stuff. What I care about is that you know the importance of, like we said, the asset for the owner.

[00:38:12] This is their wealth building strategy for their family and generationally. And then you’re bringing guests into these properties that have never been in the property before. They have their family in it or their friends. It’s a very important job. And on top of the guest and the owner, you are also representing our industry as a co-host.

[00:38:34] The services that you bring to your guests, and to your owners, and to the community greatly affect who we are as an industry. And I love there’s diversity in terms of how we operate our businesses, but at the end of the day, safety and respect for our communities has to be at the forefront. Because if we have a lot of these stories in the news about, landlords, property managers, co-hosts who are absent or who don’t care, it makes it really hard. 

[00:39:03] Can I be honest with you? Sometimes when I’m traveling, I will think about staying in a hotel because I’m nervous about the operations of the short-term rental I might be staying at because there’s no standardization there. So it’s really tough. And I want to change that.

[00:39:20] I want when I travel it, to always be, I want to support the short-term rental industry because there are now more hosts who care than those who are just doing it to make a quick buck.

[00:39:30] Amy: Right, that’s exactly what I was thinking as you were talking. We want the reputation of short-term rental hosts and people staying at short-term rentals. We don’t need to hear all these nightmare stories all the time. We want people raving about their short-term rental experience. It escalates up, even towards municipalities and cities needing to put regulations on if there are so many hosts that are not leveling up like we are encouraging hosts to do. 

[00:40:07] Sarah: It’s very important. So if you’re listening, it’s rewarding. It is crazy profitable for you. I will tell you that. As I was growing our company, I was like, wow, I feel great about our profit margins and what I’m able to take home, what I’m able to pay our team. Lucrative is the word I was looking for.

[00:40:29] That’s all great, but also remember your systems aren’t just about having a system because you’re supposed to. It’s so that you can have a really well-run property and do all those things, serve your owners, your guests, and your community.

[00:40:43] Amy: So if people want to stay at one of these Stay Awhile– what if people want to Stay Awhile? Where do they. 

[00:40:50] Sarah: They want to stay a while with me? Yeah. You can head to staywhilehostingco.com, and also check out our site. I spent a lot of time on it and money because it was important to me that that stay, that our digital real estate was just as dialed in as our physical real estate. But yeah, check out the website, and reach out if you have any questions. 

[00:41:08] Amy: Sarah Karakaian, ladies and gentlemen. Amazing. Thank you so much for spending time with me, and good luck with co-hosting.