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Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:05] You’re listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette’s background in business operation–
Annette Grant: [00:00:15] And Sarah’s extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over a million dollars and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:28] We love sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out, serve your guests, and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry–
Annette Grant: [00:00:39] Or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you’re experienced, new, or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you’ll feel right at home. Before we dive into the content, let’s hear a word from our sponsor.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:57] Hello, listeners and viewers. Welcome back for another great week. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant: [00:01:07] I am Annette Grant and together we are–
Both Sarah and Annette: [00:01:09] Thanks for Visiting.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:10] We’re going to kick off the show like we do every week and that is sharing you, our amazing listeners and viewers who are using the #STRShareSunday. We will not only share you on our Instagram channel on Sunday, but give you some love here on the podcast, on YouTube, to our email subscribers, it’s a whole thing. So use the hashtag. Nettie, who are we sharing this week?
Annette Grant: [00:01:31] This week we are sharing @TheAcornCabiNC. So it’s like cabin C. She’s in North Carolina. So it’s like a play on letter. The @TheAcornCabiNC run onwards there. So here’s the deal. This is what I want to highlight today about TheAcornCabiNC. Claudia, well done. Here’s the deal. She has just a couple of hundred Instagram followers, which is great, by the way, but she is really utilizing reels in her content. And some of them are getting 6,000 views, 7,000 views. That’s a lot of eyes on your property.
And one of the things I think she did really well is she did a collaboration campaign with an influencer that probably asked to stay at her house, and you should be including this now if you’re having influencer stay, asking them to produce reels for you. They’re getting a lot more views. So if you go to her account, you will see it was a fashion travel and her that went together and collaborated on a reel and that is one that is getting a lot of views out of her reel.
So please check that out. See the way that she’s done that. Add this potentially to an ask if you have someone an influencer, staying in your space. But please just look at all the reels that she is producing and you’ll see she is getting a ton of views. That’s a lot of eyes on her property, which we hope are converting into reservations. So well done, Claudia, and we appreciate you using our hashtag. Please give Claudia some love on her Instagram account and do some reels. Check it out. And if you don’t follow Sarah and I on Instagram, we’re cranking out the reels. So please give us a follow there.
But let’s get on to this episode. We are excited about our guest. And we’re going to just champion right now getting out there, meeting people. We met this gentleman at the STR wealth conference. We are so thankful that we went to that because we have met so many new friends. We have so many new guests for our show. So Sarah and I just want to encourage you if there is a local meetup in your area, if there’s anything there, get out and meet fellow hosts. It will change the game for you. So, Sarah, who do we have on the show today?
Sarah Karakaian: [00:03:32] We have a short-term rental celebrity, and I can say that with confidence. Kyle Stanley is a super host from Fresno, California, and host of The Fearless Investor podcast. Kyle grew his short-term rental business from 3,000 to 20,000 per month in less than a year during COVID. Now he teaches other hosts to do the same through his six-figure formula. We’re going to crack that formula today. Kyle, welcome to the show.
Kyle Stanley: [00:03:59] Thank you so much. I’ve already learned something. Getting an influencer to post a reel, I liked that idea. This is why you need to collaborate with everyone, right? You learn new things.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:10] Sharing audiences is the best way to grow, quote-unquote, “organically” without paid ads, it’s sharing some anxiety, listeners that probably have similar interests if it’s a solid collaboration.
Annette Grant: [00:04:22] And they’ve spent a lot of time getting their community to know, like, and trust them. So let’s share that. Sarah and I are here. This is why we have Kyle on. We are about collaboration over competition. And we know that Kyle has so much to teach everyone today, including Sarah and myself. But I have a huge question because I was researching you after we met you. Were you an ex-sportscaster or news newscaster? Tell us how in the world you are now in short-term rentals when you used to have the microphone in front of you in a different way.
Kyle Stanley: [00:04:52] I thought you were going to ask me if I was a PGA golfer because if you Google Kyle Stanley that’s the first thing that comes up– the PGA golfer. Not me. Yeah, I definitely was a sportscaster when I was right out of college. And then after finding out that is a very cutthroat industry, and you have to listen to other people’s demands, turns out I was better for the entrepreneurial world. So that’s where I decided to go at the age of 24.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:20] Amazing. So then how did you find real estate? Tell us how you got here from the beginning. Our listeners want to know, even a 3k a month, how’d you get there?
Kyle Stanley: [00:05:28] Yeah, honestly, it was a long and windy road. Looking back on it, I learned a ton. But I didn’t have to make all the mistakes if I just put my ego aside and said, hey, who can help me? And that was the biggest thing is I just figured, okay, I quit the corporate world. And everyone thought I was going to be so good at being a sportscaster. I just wanted to prove everyone wrong. When you want to prove everyone wrong, you’re like, “Well, I’m just going to go do this on my own.” And so I never really asked for help. I never really said how do you build a business, how do you make it scalable, how do you do these things? And I just made a ton of mistakes.
So in starting my first business, I was helping athletes get recruited to play in college. I was making their videos. And that business ended up just being something that I created unintentionally, a very low ceiling for that. So I moved on to the next thing, which was multilevel marketing. I learned a ton about self-development during that time, I learned a ton about being able to be a better influence, a better salesperson. And then from there, I got into a sales position, got into a few different things to eventually where my dad ended up on his deathbed in hospice. And it was one of those moments where I was like, man, what is life really all about? Is it really about just working your tail off and only making $70,000 a year? I just didn’t see how that was possible.
So I said, well, what’s a passive income? What are the things that people keep talking about in regard to passive income? And real estate came to the forefront. So I started listening to podcasts, BiggerPockets, The Cardone Zone, all that kind of stuff, and I got into flipping houses. And that was 2019. And then my second flip, I was like, well, what if I kept this as a short-term rental? And I pretty much 3x what I would make on it as a regular rental. And that was like, all right, cool. The short-term rentals is it. Now how do I go buy more houses? I started looking and Googling and finding out that hey, you can do this without owning the house. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, nah, I don’t believe that. I’m going to call Airbnb and I asked them, “Do I need the deed to the house?” And they were like, “No, you don’t need it.”
Annette Grant: [00:07:29] Wait, you called Airbnb?
Sarah Karakaian: [00:07:31] I’ve never heard that in my life. I love it.
Annette Grant: [00:07:32] This is amazing.
Kyle Stanley: [00:07:33] I literally called Airbnb because I just didn’t believe it. I was like, this is a scam. There’s no way. And when they said you don’t need the deed, then my next question was, well, how many properties can I have listed on my profile? And they’re like, as many as you want. I was like, oh, my God, this is real.
Annette Grant: [00:07:46] Did you record that call so you had proof?
Kyle Stanley: [00:07:49] No, but those calls, those moments that you can literally remember like the back of your hand, and I remember exactly where it was, on the Fresno highway and just being like, what! You can do this? And yeah, fast forward, 18 months later, I was at 20k a month during COVID. Now today, we’re at over 60k a month of net profits. And it’s been life-changing in just three years.
Annette Grant: [00:08:11] Okay, let’s talk about that. That’s a big number. If you don’t mind, we like to give our listeners as much visibility as possible. So can you reverse engineer that number, and what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and just talk us through that? Because as much transparency as you could give, we would appreciate that. And I know our listeners would, too.
Kyle Stanley: [00:08:26] Yeah. So we have a combination of anything from small studios to as big as five-bedroom cabins. And I would say in the beginning, I was just all about saying yes to everything. So first of all, it started off where I told you I own that one, I went out and bought another property. So I own my first two and then I bought into the arbitrage model and started going out and doing it without owning the house and arbitraging. And naturally in February of 2020, so really just about six months in, people started asking me, what about if you take my property and manage it for me? And I’d never heard of cohosts. I didn’t have any course on that. I was just like, well, let me just have some numbers in.
Annette Grant: [00:09:07] You should have taken our course on that, Kyle.
Kyle Stanley: [00:09:09] I know. I didn’t even know about you guys.
Annette Grant: [00:09:13] I want to ask though, when you’re just starting out, are all of these properties in Fresno? Can you geographically walk us along that path too?
Kyle Stanley: [00:09:19] Yeah, for sure. So all in Fresno town. Next door is Clovis, so Fresno and Clovis where we’re at. So I started the cosi model, just basically trying to say okay, it’s property management, so maybe I can just take a percentage and I did it that way. And that’s how we really started to grow incredibly fast. We were just collaborating with other investors, other realtors, getting deals sent our way to where now we have in Fresno, Clovis, and now a little town north of us called Bass Lake, we have about 55 properties, combination, like I said, from studios all the way to five bedrooms.
And we’re actually at a point where we’re trying to offload some of those underperforming properties that we said yes to in the beginning. And I would go by I’d the same thing. I’d say yes, then again in the beginning because they led me to bigger properties and other connections. But now it’s like these don’t really make a lot of sense for our portfolio anymore. So that’s where we’re at. Hope that answered you question.
Annette Grant: [00:10:11] Yeah, and so it sounds like you have a, let’s call it the trifecta. You own some of the homes, you cohost some of the homes, and then you arbitrage some of the homes. Can you give us a breakdown of how many properties fall in each of those pillars?
Kyle Stanley: [00:10:27] We own eight doors, we just added a five-unit arbitrage complex and we’re getting rid of two. So that puts us at nine or 10 arbitrage. And that leaves us with however many, the rest are co hosting. I think that’s 37 here in Fresno. I have another business in Phoenix with a partner. We have another 10 or 12 over there, but all the income that I’m including is just in Fresno.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:10:53] Okay. With this amazing monthly net revenue, what is the most important thing for you now? Is it take home to your family or are you putting a large portion of it into buying more real estate, especially with the changing interest rates and just the overall changing atmosphere that we’re all saying like, what’s going to happen here? How are you using your impressive net profits to forage yourself?
Kyle Stanley: [00:11:15] Yeah, great question. So when I first got into this, the only goal I had was $20,000 a month. So now life is a little bit more expensive. So 25–
Annette Grant: [00:11:24] First, you just got married, right?
Kyle Stanley: [00:11:26] Yeah, I just got married.
Annette Grant: [00:11:28] We had the pleasure of meeting his lovely wife too. So I think his expenses just went up a little bit.
Kyle Stanley: [00:11:33] Believe it or not too, she just started her own Airbnb business. So watch out, you might have her on your podcast.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:11:39] I love it. Bring it on.
Kyle Stanley: [00:11:39] I would say I am happy with $30,000 a month. That covers everything. That allows us to travel. That gives me the full financial freedom to make decisions. So what do I do with the other 30? The other 30, about 10 of it just stays within the company to make sure that we can weather some things. And then the rest of it, honestly, I’m focusing– first, it’s kind of plan A, plan B. Plan A is I always want to take care of my team. I’m a big believer in culture. I’m a big believer that as long as I understand what my team’s needs are, I can meet them. And most of the time that’s not financially, but sometimes it is. For example, we have my COO that three months ago, she just basically needed an advance on some things because her husband had just lost his job. And I want to take care of them. I want to make sure that that is the first thing that we’re doing.
Aside from that, some of them want to sit down and they want to learn how to can they buy their first home. And they’re not looking for extra income, they’re just looking to know the strategy. And so it gives me an opportunity to be able to get to know my team and really pour into them. And so if that extra $20,000 needed to go to the team, then we’re looking at that, but I at least want to have a little bit set aside because I don’t like getting hit with taxes like I did this last year. So I want to go on some more real estate, add some more doors to my ownership so I can cost seg and defer a lot of those taxes.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:12:52] Hey, listeners, cost segregation is a whole other episode, which we need to dial into, since I don’t think we’ve done an episode on that yet. So, Kyle, you’ve grown to 50-plus doors, 50-plus properties. Talk to us a little about your team structure because I know our listeners are like that’s a lot of–
Annette Grant: [00:13:11] We want to give that transparency too of, like, hey, you’re not doing– I’m assuming you and your wife are not doing all this on your own.
Kyle Stanley: [00:13:18] No, I put about two or three hours a week into the business. And it’s really just checking in with one person on my team, that’s my COO. Her name is Danny. Danny pretty much runs my business. So she is my first person that just checks in with me on things. And that’s really the only point of contact that I have to have. Then we also have a cleaning manager who just manages all of our in house cleaners. And we have found the best way to do the business is to have in-house cleaners rather than going and getting a company because we have more control over bonusing them, making them part of the culture.
If we have a company, it’s tough to make them part of the culture because the boss of that company is very protective of them. So we like getting a stay-at-home mom or dad who just says hey, I’m free, and I want to make some more money and we teach them our ways. So we have 12 cleaners right now. We have a quality control manager who checks the properties as often as she can to make sure that they’re working appropriately. We have three VAs who cover the majority of the 168 hours a week that are for customer service, and then about two to three vendors per category from plumbing and electricity and all that good stuff, and one interior designer who is my wife.
Annette Grant: [00:14:27] Oh, love it. Okay. So let’s talk about the cleaners if you don’t mind and then the VAs. Now that we know the structure, what was the order in which you hired this team out?
Kyle Stanley: [00:14:37] Yeah, the first person was my COO. I was very blessed to literally just post on Facebook and say, “Hey, do you know anyone that is looking to help me with some real estate-related activities and has a flexible schedule between 11:00 to 4:00?” Literally, when I posted, an hour later, someone was tagging their cousin. And I had one conversation with her and I was like, “You’re in. Let’s go.” So I’ve found and I think a lot of people in the industry find that if people were willing to do the small things and do it well, and do it with integrity, and reliability, and just nailing that one small thing, then they’re more likely to take on more responsibility.
So I’ve started everyone in our company outside of vendors as cleaners. And if you are doing a good job with cleaning, there are growth opportunities within our company to become a quality control manager, a cleaning manager, a CEO, or COO. And that’s exactly what I’ve done is basically just brought in people, put them in a cleaning position, they dominate that, they have opportunities to grow, or they have opportunities to make more income by doing setups and things of that nature. So that’s how my COO started, that’s how my clean manager started, that’s how my quality control manager started.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:16:05] I love that. What is your favorites of the trifecta? Is it co-hosting, arbitrage, or owner-operator?
Kyle Stanley: [00:16:08] I don’t have a favorite. I teach that co-hosting is how you’re going to grow your business the quickest. You start with arbitrage. Owners like that guarantee. They like to know, hey, I’m going to get a guarantee. Even if you don’t have experience, they know at least I’m going to sign a lease, and I’m going to be able to get a guaranteed rent. And if anything happens, I can kick this person out because we have an addendum with the lease. So I like starting there. But then as soon as you start there, and you do the right things, by connecting with the right people, screaming to the world what you’re doing, the easiest way to grow is by making owners more money than they would make with a regular rental.
And so if I can make an owner way more money, call it an extra $1,000 a month, and it only costs them 10 to $15,000 to invest for furniture and consumables, that person sees 100% return on their investment year one, and they’re like, “Yeah, I’m down for that.” That just creates this trickle-down effect of they’re just going to tell all their friends and you just have all these inbound leads. And then when you create all that cash flow to solve that short-term problem, maybe it’s leaving your job, maybe it’s creating that second income so that you can travel more with your family, have more time with your family, once you’ve solved that problem, now all the excess should go towards owning real estate to protect your assets and protect that income. And so that’s the evolution that we teach. So for that reason, I guess my favorite is owning because that’s eventually where you want to be. But my favorite for getting started is arbitrage and favorite for growing is co-hosting.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:17] I would say, Kyle, so our listener base is a strong owner-operator listenership. So I want to put this on its head. We get DMs or emails that are like, “I actually love my W two. I love my job, but I also want to be a part of the short-term rental because I want to own real estate and I like the short-term rental model.” Since a lot of your community is looking to be the operator, be the property manager, be the host, what are some things that these owners can ask the potential co-host, arbitrageur, property manager, to weed them out from those who are really just looking to make a quick buck? What are some things that you see even with people coming into your world, how can you tell the person who has the right mindset for longevity versus someone who’s just in it for a quick dollar?
Kyle Stanley: [00:18:03] Yeah, well, let’s be honest here and just say the big companies are not ones that you want– the CASAs, the Turnkeys, the Avant Stay. I just stayed at one in Breckenridge at Avant Stay. It was horrible. So those are the ones that are going to promise the world and likely underdeliver. So I would stay away from the big ones. I would start by googling in your area and look for the mom-and-pop shops. Ours is literally named Fresno short-term rentals. So we’re specifically in that area. We’re not the CASA who serves Fresno.
I would also personally try to avoid the ones that say yes, I can do it nationwide. I would much rather hear someone is really great and qualified in one, two, maybe three markets because they have teams in all those markets. When people start saying, I can do it nationwide, they spread themselves thin. They don’t develop great relationship. For me to go and host something in Alaska, I don’t have the plumber, I don’t have the handyman, I don’t have the runner, I don’t have the cleaners. I got to just start cold calling. And that’s not really an easy way to develop a relationship with your team and a culture that’s going to create a team that says, “I’m dropping everything to help Kyle because I’m a part of the team.”
So I would look for more of the mom-and-pop in the area. And when I say mom and pop, anything over 100 units in one area, just to me it gets spread a little bit too thin. It’s more about quantity than quality at that point. I would ask them what their team looks like, what’s communication going to be like? Am I going to be talking to a new person every time or do I get that one connection or two connections depending on if it’s a weekday or weekend and who I get to connect with to make sure that if I want to go check on my property I can or to make sure like, hey, I saw this night got booked $100 and this one got booked to $200, I need some questions answered. The biggest thing is owners just want to be educated in the beginning to make sure that they can trust what you are doing. A lot of co-hosts get really disappointed or really frustrated with owners because there’s so many questions.
My response to that is, well, if you were going to put six figures into a house and go and furnish it, and then give it over to someone, wouldn’t you want to be a little educated as well? That’s going to happen. So those are the things I think if you can have that kind of relationship where it’s on speed dial, not necessarily with the person like me, I onboard an owner and I say, “Hey, you’re going to start working with my COO, Danny. She is way more qualified at most of the things that you’re going to have questions on anyway. But if she can’t answer questions, she’s going to come to me, and we’re going to get the answer for you.” So I think that gives a lot of security and peace of mind for owners. And so that’s the kind of people that I’d be looking for if I were you and wanting to go get a management company.
Annette Grant: [00:20:53] Oh, I love that answer. Your crush those, yeah, for sure. And do you have her have your clients, do they ever want to do walkthroughs of your current properties or do you just show them all of your listings? What’s the best way that you show your portfolio to your potential client?
Kyle Stanley: [00:21:08] I’ve never had a client want to walk through a property. It’s mainly just been, here’s our website, here’s our listings, take a look. The way that I built my business has just been off of results. So it’s kind of like anything. If you’re going to go try to lose 100 pounds and you have a friend who lost 100 pounds with the trainer, they don’t really care how the trainer did it, they just care that it happened. So like, I’m going to say, great, I want to lose 100 pounds. And I heard you help my friend Zack, do that. So I’m going to go do that.
So most of our clients say, “Hey, I heard you earn my friend, so and so an extra 500, 600, $700 a month. So what do I need to do?” They come very qualified most of the time. I know a lot of people out there they’re doing Google ads or they’re doing outbound, and that’s the kind of stuff that you need to build a little bit more of the credibility with them. But warm leads are always going to be the way to build this business. And that’s how we grew really quickly.
Annette Grant: [00:22:00] All right. I want to ask you, we didn’t talk about this ahead of the show. What does your Fresno short-term rental like– is your direct booking site? How is that starting to play into– because I’m pretty sure you just listed on Airbnb in the beginning. How are you starting to take more ownership of the Fresno short-term rentals and have people booked direct with you?
Kyle Stanley: [00:22:21] Do you have an hour?
Annette Grant: [00:22:22] No, but we have some more time. So let’s [Inaudible 00:22:23] We’re ready for it.
Kyle Stanley: [00:22:25] I would say the number one way that we’re doing it is we have a sequence of emails that goes out. So we capture the email of the guests, typically through the guidebook. Then once we’ve captured their email, we have an automated sequence of emails that goes out for the next basically two months, encouraging them to rebook with us on our direct booking site 10% off. And that right there, plus a five-star stay and giving them the experience they want is where most of our direct bookings are coming from.
Now we’re starting to explore more things like getting our Google page a ton of reviews so that we can have more traffic, getting on to a lot of these insurance companies lists so that they will call us with any of those temporary housing, connecting with more realtors who have transitional living. They sell that person’s house, but that person wasn’t able to buy a house in time. Now they got to live somewhere else for a month or two. We’re trying to develop more relationships so that we can have– just like how we built our business was based on relationships, we want to build our client base on relationships.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:23:28] Yeah, and, listeners are going to keep hearing us take us home because no one likes to hear the whole calling or building relationships. Another way to say that is like cold calling. But it works. And if picking up the phone is stressful to you, then get your butt to a bunch of networking meetings in industries that maybe you’re not directly related and learn. Just to connect with those people because again, putting all your eggs in the Airbnb basket is just a surefire way to like our friend Mark Booster like to say, being a employee of Brian Chesky. But okay, you have a pretty impressive Facebook group. How did that come to be? And can you just brag a little bit about the Facebook group, how you created it, and what’s going on in there?
Kyle Stanley: [00:24:14] The how I still I’m trying to figure out. At the moment, we have 137,000 member Facebook group, Airbnb Masterminds, the largest for hosts in the world for Airbnb. And here’s just a good learning lesson. If you are serious about building a business, you need to be a person of interest. You need to be the person that people are talking about. And so what’s the easiest way to do that? Well, starting a podcast, starting a YouTube channel, starting a Facebook page, those were all the things that I did.
And I didn’t know hardly anything about short-term rentals at the time. I just said if I can bring all these people together, and I’m the person that brings them all together, I become a person of interest. So that was the only goal that I had was just like, I just want to connect with good people. And then in March of 2021 we had 1,000 members. It’d been a year. We had 1,000 members. And one day I woke up and there were 25 new requests. And I was like, why did I get 25 new requests? And I figured out, they were all fake. I was like, oh, okay, well, that explains it.
Then the next day, I had 20 new requests from real people. And I was like, what’s going on? And now ever since then, it’s just like, we’ve had days where we’ve had 1,500 people requesting to get in there. And honestly, it’s just a fun place to learn. You get to see a lot of really cool techniques that people are doing. I do some listing reviews in there every once in a while, I post some tips, we’re going to have you live here in the Facebook group so they get to learn from other experts. And on our podcast, we get to go live in this Facebook group. And so I think there’s a lot of cool engagement that people get to see absolutely for free and that’s why people continue to join, I think.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:25:48] It’s such a good lesson for our listeners to even if they don’t want to become educators in the space or anything of that nature, just that business concept of becoming a person of interest, if you become the go-to short-term rental manager in your city or area, people are going to think of you. Just today I got a text like, “Hey, Sarah, do you know anyone who wants to buy this property?” And I’m a licensed real estate agent. So I can refer– you know what I mean? We are the go-to in our area and so there’s just not only financial gain, but it’s just good for the people who work for you to have more people stay in your places. If you think outside the box, if you think outside of just listing on Airbnb, there is no ceiling to the amount of amazing things you can bring to your business or what you’re trying to do in the space. But wouldn’t you agree that even if you don’t want to be an influencer in this space or an educator that this is still a really cool concept?
Kyle Stanley: [00:26:37] It’s the abundance mindset. There’s no such thing as competition. There’s only collaboration. I just actually brought in a new student and he was in Northern California. He said, “Hey, do I get exclusivity rights to be the only Northern California guy in your program?” And I was like, “No, because you want other northern California guys in there. You want to collaborate with them.” That’s not competition. Just because they’re learning the same strategies doesn’t mean that there’s not enough business to go around.
So you want to create relationships with those people because here’s what happens. They get a lead that they don’t want to take on or don’t have the capability of taking on, who are they going to call? You. They get a guest who says, “Hey, I want to stay at your place.” You’re all booked up. And you can send them over there or vice versa, they can send them to you. If there’s ever regulations, we all want to work as one unit to go down to City Hall and say no, you’re literally ruining lives for people by shutting this down. Let’s work together. We need to collaborate together. We need to be teams together.
And that all starts with having an abundance mindset of realizing that a, there’s enough business to go around, and b, whatever you put out there is going to come back tenfold. So if you’re putting out negativity, it’s going to come back tenfold. If you put out positivity, it’s going to come back tenfold. And I literally sat in a room in June of 2019. I was two months into my Airbnb business. I was making $3,000 a month. And I was sitting there watching this guy who had 30 rentals brag about the fact that he was making $5,000 a month with 30 rentals that he owned. And I was like, “I’m doing that with two right now.” And I’m just thinking to myself like, I have this goal that I’m just going to hold on to.
And then he called out the entire room and he said, if you have something of value, you need to be screaming it to the world because it’s going to come back tenfold. It’s an abundance mindset versus scarcity. And I literally felt like he was talking straight to me. And I was just like, dude, do I really need to tell people about this? And I did. And I trusted that. And I can tell you today, that 60,000 net per month would probably be about 20,000 net. The opportunity to coach hundreds of students would not be there, the ability to connect with amazing high-level people in the real estate space. Next month I’m going to be meeting Max Maxwell over at TJ to Johnny’s event. I got to meet Brent Daniels, who’s one of the biggest wholesalers in the world. It doesn’t happen unless I actually bought into the abundance mindset. And so yeah, it can only help.
Annette Grant: [00:28:50] And we’ll make sure to link to Kyle’s Facebook group in our show notes. Okay, Kyle, as we’re wrapping up the episode, can you tell us maybe one or two of these tips that you’ve brought to your Facebook group that just made the group go crazy? Is there some stuff that you’re like, oh, my gosh, that shook the Facebook group?
Kyle Stanley: [00:29:07] I guess just a tip especially because you have a lot of owner-operators, we had a struggle from, I want to say it was June ish of 2020 to about March of 2021, so almost a year where we were getting this close to losing our superhero status. And I couldn’t figure out what in the world was going on. And it was a combination of cleaners not being trained properly, not having any quality control in regards to going and checking on the condition of the property, and then the missing piece that really has made the biggest difference is just having an ask at the end of a stay.
And so we added amazing training to our cleaners. We added a quality control manager that would go and double checks some cleanings and make sure the cleaners were on track. And then we added this really cool thing that I think would be a great tip for anyone is that we literally take a picture of the review that we’re about to leave for the guest. And we say, hey, I just want to let you know, this is the review, I’m about to leave. If you feel that– and this is the key, if you feel that your stay was five stars, we would also appreciate a five-star review as well.
By doing that, there’s a fine line there because we can’t say, we’re leaving your five-star review, so you should too. That’s called extortion. We can’t do that. We just encourage them and show them we thought your stay was five stars. And if you felt that ours was too, we’re really dependent on those five-star reviews. By doing that– and we never get any pushback from that, by doing that, we have raised the bar of what we now expect. And now an average month is a 4.9-star rating. And we excel at about 4.95, where a year ago, we were at 4.8 and hoping to get to 4.85. So those three things I think are crucial to helping you get those five-star reviews.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:30:52] There’s so many good things about what you just said because listeners I know a lot, especially our listeners, Kyle, they tend to be overachievers. They’re the A-plus student in the front row. And I’m one of those people too. And it’s tough to get that constructive criticism, even if we feel it’s not deserved. So when we get those, really try not to let your ego push that aside. See it, digest it. You just raised the bar for me, how can I go above and beyond for that? For example, just listeners will love this. Back in the day, I got a three-star review because I didn’t have any Kleenex in my rental.
I grew up like you just use toilet paper. You know what I mean? So this is back in the day. I just didn’t think of adding that extra box. You better believe I have Kleenex on our rentals now. But at first, I was just so upset like the overall stay was a three-star because I didn’t have Kleenex, but it just really helped me remember that the details are what set me apart and like how can I dig deep into those details? So I love that getting the five-star review from the guests reminding the guests because they can sometimes– they’re off to the next thing. It’s not their business. And so they can sometimes forget the value of that feedback. But also digging into you wanted to raise it up by a point or whatever to having the humility to do that, I think is what sets you apart too and what’s going to help your business and the culture at your business be like, how can we level up each and every time.
Kyle Stanley: [00:32:09] Exactly right there. I think we all have egos that we have to check, especially being a business owner. If you have this mindset of like, what I say goes, you’re missing out on so many opportunities in your business to get better. And so whether it’s a guest, a cleaner, an employee, I’m always asking what could we have done better or what do you need in order to fulfill what you expect out of this. And if I’m just asking those questions, and then I tell everyone, awareness is everything. If you’re aware, now you’re able to make changes. If you’re aware and you’re not making changes, then you got to do some digging down and decide like, well, am I even ready to be a business owner because if you know the problem, and your ego is still in the way, then that’s an issue.
But I have learned so much on how to treat my employees just by asking them, what do you want? What’s going to make your job easier? What’s going to make your life better? Simple questions. But the same thing for our guests. Hey, what was it about this day that wasn’t quite five stars that we can do better? And if you can be open-minded to that advice, even if they’re like, hey, there was no Kleenex, okay, is that really worth a three-star review? Probably not. But is it something simple for me to add in? Yeah, it is.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:33:25] Yeah, 100%. Kyle, you’re a rock star. Thank you so much for sharing just your story, your growth, and your mindset. It has turned to be a really nice mindset episode, which we haven’t had one of those in a minute. So we really appreciate your time. What’s next for you? And where can our listeners follow you if they wanted to get connected?
Kyle Stanley: [00:33:42] What’s next for me? Like I said, I want to own more properties. We want to go into a few more states eventually. But where people can follow me in my journey and getting connected with us, really best place is YouTube and the podcast that’s called The Fearless Investor. And if you want to actually have a conversation with me, DM me on Instagram @fearlesskyle. And it sounds like you guys are going to have a link to our Facebook page which again is Airbnb Masterminds.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:34:06] For sure, absolutely. Yeah, Kyle’s a cool dude, everybody, so connect with him. He’s doing awesome stuff in our industry. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant: [00:34:14] I’m Annette Grant, and together we are–
Both Sarah and Annette: [00:34:16] Thanks for Visiting.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:34:17] We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. Head on over to the show notes for additional information about today’s episode. And please hit that Subscribe button and leave us a review. Awesome reviews help us bring you awesome content. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to hanging out with you next week.
