Ex AirBNB Employee: HOW to STEAL Profits

I interviewed Airbnb in January. They said no thanks. But as soon as I went in there, I was like, oh, there's something different about this, this accounting team, this company. So I stayed in touch. They hired me a few months later in the same department, different job.

Short term rental market softened a little bit in the last 12 months. Would you agree with that? And what do you. How do you approach.

There's a hundred decisions to be a successful Airbnb host, as you're mentioning, there's 50 bullet points. There's a hundred of those. The hosts that do the most are going to be the most successful. It's not that anyone is that hard or anyone is going to make you successful.

Welcome everybody to another Main street business podcast where I get to interview an entrepreneur and influencer on the streets of Main street in America. I love it. Although Daniel here in a moment you'll find out is living abroad at the moment. But Daniel has written the book oh my gosh, there's so many Optimize youe bnb and he has a new book out Profitable Properties. Daniel used to work at Airbnb and then went rogue and frequently, I love it. Started teaching everybody about how to optimize their short term rental and he goes into vacation rentals with or within or with not within Airbnb system. And Daniel, it's just an honor. I have so much to talk to you about. I'm just glad you're here. Thank you so much for being here.

I'm glad to be here. And I haven't been looking forward to a podcast in as much as this one. I think we scheduled it two months ago. And so I'm glad it's finally come. It's always been on my calendar. I barely ever schedule anything two months in advance. So equally myself have been looking forward to it. And I was born and born and raised in California. So but now, now I do live, live abroad.

Okay, well, I love it. And here's the deal for many of you that are followers of mine, and you may have just got onto this podcast today because you're an Airbnb or short term rental investor and you're a fan of Daniel, maybe you're a fan of mine. Let me just put it in context. The Airbnb or just call it. When I say Airbnb, I mean short term rental. I know there's so many different platforms, but I'll try to stick to short term rental. Short term rentals are such a phenomenal tax strategy right now in the US Tax code. There's a loophole there that's very powerful. You don't have to be a real estate professional. Take advantage of it. Many of you have seen other podcasts and recordings of mine on that, and it's just such good wealth building hard asset real estate cash flow. You can use arbitrage, you can buy a property. There's so much there to unpack on the acquisition and tax planning. But at the end of the day, if you go down this path, you got to manage this thing. You got to know what you're doing, you got to make it successful, because we don't want to throw good money at bad. And that's where Daniel comes in. I've got his book dog eared this morning. I was over a little Airbnb I'm bringing online by December 1st. I have my daughter over there painting today, and I'm just like, just. I am loving it. I like to get dirty and get into it. So, Daniel, we just want to learn from you today. And I have some poignant questions, but tell us how you got into all this. Like, I, I'm just excited first to give us some backdrop from your.

I, I guess it starts if, if we want to go back to the very beginning. It starts when I was at UC Santa Barbara studying accounting, and I eventually ended up at Airbnb as an accountant back in 2013. In 2012, I quit my. I was a public accountant. I quit my job. I just couldn't. I. I had a. I had an epiphany kind of in the break. I quit it right before a busy season, very bad. Dad was upset at me. Didn't have a job lined up, but I knew everything would be okay. I interviewed Airbnb in January 2013. They said they got. Gave me an interview, but they said, no, thanks. But as soon as I went in there, I was like, oh, this. There's something different about this, this accounting team, this company. So I stayed in touch and they hired me a few months later in the same department, different job.

I love it, man. And I love this accounting background. You keep giving me all these reveals. We had a great talk here before the show and I, man of my own heart. So that's great. That's cool. Well, okay, let's jump to. I really want to provide some value, value for your followers as well as mine. I know. And we'll be on your tube, your YouTube talking about taxes for your folks. But on this end, I've got a lot of clients. Let me just get there. Right, right. With this Question. A lot of people are chasing the tax strategy. Maybe it gets their attention. They may have some long term rentals, but they've never owned a short term rental. Oh, my gosh. Where to start here? I. What do you. What was just out of the gate? What are some things that you would tell your brother or your mom if they called up and said, I want to do a short term rental, and you're like, all right, you know, I mean, what, what's going to. The first couple of things that come to mind.

Well, okay, it would depend on my audience. But for no one, no matter who I'm talking to, differentiation would be like a key theme. If you're gonna do Airbnb, you might as well be the best as you can. Most Airbnbs, especially on Airbnb platform, VRBO platform. Airbnb is incentivized to have everything kind of look the same. So you have to take it to an extra level to differentiate yourself from your competition. You do that in the titles, the photos, the text, everything. And in terms of your listing. So right now I'm staying at this place is a small, 300 square foot, 400 square foot, not including the giant balcony place in medellin. I'm paying $3,500 for it a month. That's expensive for Medellin. It's a nice place. It's on the 20th floor. It has the best view. The best. Not like top 10. It has the best view of where you're at in the city. And so why do they get to charge $3,500 for. For such a mediocre interior? Because differentiation, they're. They're number one differentiated. So everything you do, from how you're furnishing your space to the, to the amenities, to where it's located, all think about differentiation. The other thing would be, I would just. If I wanted to sell them on it, and they had somewhat of a. They built a website, let's say, or they tried to. They used Google before Google. To rank on number one on Google, you have to spend a lot of money. You have to really know what you're doing to rank a webpage on. You know, if I want to type Airbnb book to rank that on Google, it takes a lot to rank that on Amazon. It takes a lot to do that on Airbnb. You can rank number one on that page in a day.

Wow. So it's understanding, and this is what I enjoyed about your book, was understanding the metrics, for lack of a better word, maybe, or the Algorithm of Airbnb, you had like, gosh, it was 40 or 50 points of just make sure you do this, make sure you do this. And it's not, they're not hard to do or time consuming. They're just, you just gotta pay attention to some of these little steps.

Since that book that you're referring to, which is Optimize youe bnb, the first book I bought, I came up with a concept. It's called, it's called one of a hundred. Not one in a hundred, one of a hundred. And there's a hundred decisions to be a successful Airbnb host, as you're mentioning, there's 50 bullet points, there's a hundred of those. The hosts that do the most are going to be the most successful. It's not that anyone is that hard or any one is going to make you successful. But if you do the most, do you have the right amenities in your kitchen? Is your bed soft? Do you have a right sleeping experience? Is your wi fi good? All of these decisions. And so I try and teach hosts to do all of those, as many as you can of those decisions in an easy way. And I try and break it down as easily as I can. For example, my pricing strategy, it's unique to me. It's a two step strategy that gives people, that gives hosts the biggest issues. Pricing Single biggest thing I talk about on my consultation calls.

Yeah, and I remember in your. And by the way, everyone down in the description, you'll have access to Daniel's website to book him as a private consultant on your Airbnbs or your short term rentals. It links to his books. I've got to get his newest book. I've just been buried in his older one and I know it just came out this year. And so we'll talk more about that. Let's go market here for a minute. This is one of the big concerns a lot of people have too. Arguably the Airbnb or sorry, the short term rental market softened a little bit in the last 12 months. Would you agree with that? And what do you, how do you approach that? Like what are you telling your clients that you're consulting with?

I just talked to someone today, I think about this and I don't so that typically most Airbnbs are average, just like most people are average height. Most Airbnbs are average. So who is, who is talking about this Airbnb bust? Look at their Airbnb. It's rarely, it's rarely going to be someone who has a good Airbnb So if you're in the top 10, 20% of the market, your prices might come down. If it's really a big issue and the whole market is suffering, your prices might come down. But the best offers in the market, which is not the cheapest price, the best offers, what are you offering in exchange for your price? Which is ultimately how you optimize a listing and get a guest to book your listing, is those hosts aren't really that affected. I do know, I will say that I do know some hosts who appear to be very quality hosts who do seem to be affected by this. But the vast majority of people complaining about it are. People are hosts that aren't all that good. And the new. The good news is that I'm a guest of 2,500 Nights, and let me tell you, unequivocally, all over the world, it's not that hard to be in that top 20%. Not hard at all.

I thought that was a theme. It's interesting you say that because it was. That's a theme that now I recognize in your book is you were like, I'll put it in layman's terms. You were kind of like, chapter X, do this. And you're like, most people don't do this. It's not that hard. Nine out of 10 people don't do this. You do this, you're going to be ranked higher. I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Next chapter, same thing. Most people don't do this. And so these average people are the ones probably, quote, unquote, suffering. If they are, there's still markets that are very strong, you know, but.

And there's so many factors that go into it. Like they could have, you know, it's real. Actually, I get a call pretty frequently, and it's especially surprising after I optimize their listing, they email me a week after and they say, hey, I haven't got any bookings. And I've done this a few times to know it's a very consistent pattern. I look at their calendar, and so to them, they're failing. They haven't got a book in a week, 10 days. What's going on? I look at their calendar. Their calendars is fully booked for the next 45 days and their average guest books 30 days out. So I'm like, what's the, what's the problem here? You're fully booked. You can't. I wouldn't expect you to get an inquiry. You're fully booked. And so there's a. So that's why you know, I've never really noticed a giant decrease in Airbnb softening, but there's just like a different people. People are perceiving reality very differently. And that's just an example of one. But that is the result of everything you've done. Your calendar being empty is not what you should be focusing on. You should be focusing on everything else that that equals. How's your service, your hospitalities, your listing, authorized equal, Calendar full or calendar not? People say my calendar isn't full. That's great. But if we want to lower the price, we could do that. That's the last. I have a three step, three step troubleshooting strategy that we could go to. The last one is pricing. That's the biggest thing you can do to increase your rank. But it's the third or third step because we don't want to just lower our pricing.

And I want to come back to your two step pricing. I love this three step triage. But for those out there, let's explain arbitrage for a minute. I. I'm not a big fan. I don't think you are. But there's a lot of people love it. I guess the traditional method, everybody out there is you buy a house, you furnish it, you take as many good pictures as you can. You start learning what to do. Try to become a super host. Go through that learning process cycle. But arbitrage tell. How often do you see that and explain what it is for our listeners?

Well, I'll just say I just, I'll just correct one, one big thing. You said take as many good photos as you can. We'll get to listing optimization later. Actually, you take as few photos, as few good photos as you can to convince the fpg, I call them future potential guests, to book your listing. Airbnb. If you go on Airbnb, how do I optimize photos? Put as many photos as you can. Every angle of the room that's wrong. We'll get to that later. You talked about arbitrage. Arbitrage is fine if you have no other option, in my opinion, because it's easy to get in. You can't, you can't have an Airbnb property management company without ever managing any properties. You know, if you don't have money to buy a house, you can't do that. So arbitrage is the, is the easiest way to do it. That's how I view it. There's a lot of people being very successful. I document one in the new book you here in Medellin I document them because him. Because we're in the same neighborhood and I just talk about the pros and cons of. I talk about micro neighborhoods in terms of vacation rental market analysis. There's the, there's the market, there's the neighborhood and there's micro neighborhoods which is much more important than just simply the neighborhood. But I, I personally never done arbitrage. That's how I view it. I view it as a bit risky. The owner can just come in and sell the place. For example you have to put a lot of money in. Sometimes you have to put 50, 60 thousand dollars in. And for some people that, that's a lot. So you know, you have to have a. It's a whole different game.

Yeah, basically so and I'll. And let me give my definition and then it maybe you'll tell us what's typical or when you see that's common is instead of going out and having a one or two hundred thousand dollar down payment and then furnishing I can go rent a place, sign a 12 month lease let's say or hopefully maybe even longer or have it renewable and then I'm going to go buy the furnishings and try to get the place looking as good as possible. Follow my steps to optimize it and. But I really am just maybe renting for four grand a month and trying to make ten grand a month in rev or rent for two make eight. And so I'm really at the mercy that I of the landlord because I don't own the property and that's what you're talking about. I could just get ripped out from under me and I've got to storage

unit full of furniture now and you'd be a better expert at this. But you also don't get any equity, you get less write offs. You're paying rent. Right. So what you want to do also something important for and in in my online program I have today we'll talk about it but then I'll have another buddy who I consider an expert who does rental arbitrage. I bring on these experts because I like to talk about it because it is interested. People are interested in this. But if you're thinking about arbitraging the one thing that I want you to focus on is also not only the market but the size of the home. You could go to these data analytics tools and arbitrage the size of the homes. So look at how many studios one bedrooms all the way to five bedrooms are there. What's the average daily rate of each one? What's the occupancy of each one, maybe the 75 percentile occupancy rate. And you're going to see, you're going to see things like for the four bedroom, it might be, you know, an average rate of $150, but for the five bedroom, it might be an average rate of $250 where the occupancy dips only 5%. And I don't know if I'm saying too many, too many here, but this is a. Okay, so you could see that obviously you rent a five bedroom is going to be more expensive than a four bedroom, but probably not. What are we, 150 to 250? Probably not 70% more expensive. So that's where your arbitrage comes, not only in the market on Airbnb, but also by the room number, but by the number of bedrooms and further than that number of bathrooms as well. A three bedroom, one bathroom is. I, I know a lot. If you just tell me it's a three bedroom, three bathroom, the three bedroom, one bathroom, three bedroom, three bathroom is updated. It's a nicer home, it's probably in a nicer area rather than a three bedroom, one bathroom. And there might be a giant arbitrage difference just by adding another bedroom.

Wow. Okay, let's go to pricing for a minute. Let's hit this. I could just be, I've got a. I'm telling you, I'm signing up for your online program when I'm done. I really am. I'm just, I'm all in on this. I just think it's.

Maybe you could be a speaker there, actually.

Oh, I'd love it. Be honest. Oh, yeah. Because you start getting into the write offs. They really are powerful and it really adds to the roi, the overall return on investment. When I'm building equity, I'm creating cash flow and I'm saving on my tax returns. Wealthy people buy real estate, they use depreciation, cost seg, and there's just so much there. But anyway, we'll go down. That's my little rabbit hole that I love. Okay, so pricing, tell us maybe this two step pricing trick that you like because there's a lot of software out there you can buy as a plugin to help your, your pricing. Do you use those two or you just go with your two steps? Oh, okay. All right.

So yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's, there's, there's three ways, I guess you do it. The first one is use Airbnb's smart pricing, which is you do that if you don't know what you're doing. So, so if I'm going out. So if I'm going out to buy an Airbnb to buy a rental, I'm asking the host, hey, what pricing software do you use? I use smart pricing. Great. I could probably 50% get 50% more revenue from you. I went, I just went with my buddy to go look at another house and the owner said they had a third bedroom, but they don't list it on Airbnb because it's not really a bedroom. Great. I. Yeah.

Add value. You're looking at all these add value strategies.

Yeah, yeah. So they're selling for a price lower than maybe they should be. So you do need. The second way is signing up for a dynamic pricing tool. This is a third party pricing tool. There's five or six that are really good. And the third way is you just do it manually. You don't do it, which is obviously a poor decision.

Right.

So the dynamic pricing tool, you ha. It's. It's not set in. Forget it. It's not set in. Forget it. Some people think this, this is an assumption. You, you have to change your prices on a weekly basis. Mine, I go in once a week. Takes me 30 seconds per listing to look at the pricing because typically I'm not doing anything. But it, it allows me to keep my eye on future occupancy, whatever my average booking lead time is. I don't know how deep you want to go into this, but I look at my average booking lead time, which is how far in advance the average guest is booking, and I want to be a certain percent occupied at that time. So we create occupancy targets. And that's, that's what, that's, that's, that's the first step. The second step is customizations. So that's my two step. First step is just base price. Changing the base price, which is your average price on an average, Average, average, average month, average day, just your average, totally average price. That's your base price. And then we're, we're changing that as the market dynamics change. And one booking can swing your occupancy plus 20%. So you either have to keep your eye on it, and that's when you want to raise your base price and

get more money for those out there. I mean, I think it's been obvious here that if you're going to dip your toe into this and look into it, there's so much great material that you provide. Daniel, I cannot emphasize that enough to anybody that's looking to get into this segment of the real estate industry, let's say someone's already in it and they are struggling. They're like, oh, my gosh, I better sell. I just talked to a client the other day. Yeah, I'm getting out of my Airbnb or my short term rental. It's not working. It's a mess. I'm like, really? And to be honest, I don't have the tools that you do to help someone in the middle of a crisis like that. I'm ready to look at their tax return and figure out what's wrong. But on this issue, what are you.

Maybe first.

Okay, sorry. When I set the stage here, first, what are the common, obvious problems that you see people making? And then number two, maybe this three step process to try to turn around an Airbnb.

Have you been an Airbnb guest before?

Yeah, I probably got. I'd like to say I got 100 nights under my bell. I would say at least maybe 150.

All right, so think back to the last time you booked an Airbnb. Wherever that was, it doesn't matter because it's all the same all over the world. You would have went to whatever market you're looking at and you would have seen things like the title would have been like, gorgeous two bedroom, two bathroom home in center. In the center or whatever the popular neighborhood is. You would have seen photos, if you can recall the first five photos may have been like five photos of the bathroom or the kitchen or something, or the same room. And then if you had gotten to the very end of the photos, you might have seen like a hot tub or a cool balcony or something.

Yeah, I always finish with the pool.

Yep. Yep. And then this one, the text, you go and you, you read, you read the text. Just when you're. You're not yet sure, you maybe narrowed it down to two or three or four. You're not sure which one to pick. You want to read the text now. So people say the text is the least important because guests don't read the text. I say it's the most important because when a guest and FPG read the text, that means they're just shy of booking your listing. So you want to differentiate there as well.

Final step.

Yeah, that's the final step before they're making the decision. So what do most hosts do? If you could remember back last time you booked, remember, you go and you read. It's block text. Every single host has block text. It doesn't read Well, a lot of it is just fluff, useless text because it we come from a lot of people hire like vacation rental market experts, but they're not really. They're. They're trying to sell the space, walk it, open up the double doors and feel the sea breeze come in and walk through the open layout living room onto the balcony. No, what they want to know is, you know, 4200 square foot home, 360 degree balcony, two level home, stuff like that. 100 megabytes per second. Wi fi, bam bam. But what am I getting? I'm a guest, what do I get? Yeah, paying 500 bucks a night. What are you giving me? I don't want to read a paragraph of text. Because most hosts do paragraph of text. And when I say most, I mean like 99% do that very bad. And they bury their most important features, amenities in the text sometimes. And then you. There's a button we have to click open. So that would all be summarized into. If I was talking about how to improve your listing is to differentiate yourself from your competition. Everything they're doing do the opposite. They have 20 photos, five photos of every every angle. Have half that photos and do one or two angles of it of every room. You just want to give the FPG enough to make the booking. It's not that their attention span is short, it's that most hosts are just bombarding them with useless stuff. After the third photo of the bathroom, it's like all right. And also after I've looked at 10 listings and all tens have 10 listings have the same text and the same title. It's not telling me anything and I really have to dig in the photos. I have to, I have to really study this listing to figure out what are the differences. So I, my strategies are very different than all the other experts. And it's about like the title, for example, we're just amenity after amenity. So you know, a thousand megabyte per second. WI fi, flexible check in luggage storage, daily cleaning, breakfast, whatever it might be.

That differentiation, is that part of the three steps when someone's in crisis or is there kind of a three step analysis? You go into approach when there's a problem.

Separate. It's separate. I mean it's related, but there's two separate concepts. It's three step troubleshooting. Troubleshooting is when you set up your new wireless system. They, you know, troubleshoot. Everyone knows that word. How do you troubleshoot the errors that come up? So the three steps in order, the first one is Your online listing is your online. And the easiest, the easiest, the hardest and the first one you do to the third one is your online listing optimized, where it's easy for the FPG to tell yours is their best decision. That's number one. And you do that with my strategies. You can hire me to do that. You could look at my YouTube for all the free advice. And by the way, I give most everything away for free. Yeah, the only reason, and I'm very honest about this, the only reason you might pay me is if you, if you simply want to exchange your time for money you, you don't have, you have more money and then you have time, you pay me, you save time. That's it. But if you want to do it yourself, go to my YouTube, go to my blog, it's all there. So that's the first one. Optimize your online listing. That's the easiest. You could do that in 45 minutes. The next one is your hospitality, your rating essentially, which feeds into your search rank. Now the, the tricky thing about the rating is a lot of people think I have a 4.08 and I'm good. And you technically, well, you are kind of good. 4.8 of 5 seems good, but you shouldn't be comparing yourself with those who have a 4.5 because that's not your competition. A 4.5. For anyone who doesn't know it's like Uber, a 4.5 is terrible. You're like getting kicked off the platform. A 4.6 is very bad. A 4.7 is, yeah, mediocre, maybe a 4.8. We're starting to climb. Anything above a 4.9, so my goal is 4.9 or above. If you're at a 4.9 or above, then you're good. It doesn't make much sense for you to focus on that unless you're a very high level host. The concept I have here is called the 10th review. A lot of hosts, they have nine reservations, they get nine reviews. Those nine reservations were easy because nine out of 10 reservations are very easy. Then that 10th guest comes along and, and they have problems and, and the host, most hosts think, well, I had nine, I have, I have nine, five star reviews and I'm a prideful human, as we all are. And this guest is totally unfair. And I'm, you know, screw this guest. And I'm not going to give them this or give them that. And so I'm just going to take this review off. I'll take the hit. So that 10th review is actually the most important review. So it's the host who can. Who can put their pride away. And, you know, I just had. I just. Everyone should watch this video because it's just. It's like an entertaining video, but it's like, in the Airbnb community, as I'm sure you're aware, the complaint about the hair, the one hair is always like a kind of a running joke. The guests complain. Believe it or not. I got a text just weeks ago, and the guest sent me a picture. He said, this is totally unacceptable. He sent me a picture. I couldn't really tell what it is. And then luckily, he sent text following it up. He said, this is a hair in the bathroom. And it was a photo of a hair in the bathroom. I have this in the video. It's actually. It's like. It couldn't be more perfect. But that's the 10th review. So what did I do? I took it very seriously. That's the key. You have to take it more seriously than guest says. I said, that's totally unacceptable. In fact, I'd like you to leave. I'd like to give you a full refund. Leave. My team will come in. We want to do a full reclean of the house. So I took it to an absurd level, but respectfully, I was like, look, this is totally unacceptable. Yeah, I'm a guest, too. I'm a host. I don't want that ever. And so he was just trying to get a refund, obviously, and I. And. And we had a little back and forth. But after he realized, like, I was like, hey, man, can you. At 7pm on Friday, can you leave right away or text me back, let me know, because I want to get my team in there. You know, I don't want that working till midnight. And I understand this is unacceptable. It's below my standards. So I want to get. I want to make this right. So he obviously didn't want to leave, and he didn't leave, and there was no refund or anything. But the point is, I took that complaint. That was an extreme example, but whatever the complaint is, I took it seriously. Hey, the WI fi is slow. Oh, well, no, this is a common response. Oh, okay, well. Or the water's not hot. Okay. No. No other guest has complained about that. It's like, well, I don't care. I'm complaining about that. You know, that doesn't matter to me. So taking that. That service is the. The second. The second troubleshooting aspect, that's more longer term. The third is so what?

Well, what happened with that guy? Did you, did he leave you a bum reviewer? Did you get him up to five? You're like gave him a call. The hair, the hair complaint.

What happened? You got, you got to watch the video.

Oh, okay. I'm doing it. Oh, no, no, you're good. No, no, no, I watch it. No, no, I'm good. Everybody, you got to watch the video too. I want to. That's a good hook. We're going to go watch it.

It's an entertaining video too. Yeah, it's an entertaining video. I'm in the COVID photos like me like, like this and it's got like 150 refund. It's actually a good video. It didn't get as much views as I want so I'm like trying to get a few extra views here on this. Yeah, we'll hit it.

We'll hit it for you. We'll my tribe, we'll land it for you. Okay, Number three, troubleshooting. So number three.

Number three is pricing. So troubleshooting is when we have problems. So in this case we're talking about lowering pricing. That's why it's the third or third step. It's the most effective. Lowering your pricing is the single most effective thing you could do. Shoot up in. In the rank. It's the last thing we want to do. But if your listing is optimized and Your reviews are good 4.9 and above. The only thing left is pricing. Your pricing is too high. Now if you, you need to understand your minimum price. A lot of people don't understand the minimum price. Minimum price is a combination of your fixed cost and your variable cost. Minimum price is typically half of what most people think it is. And a minimum price you accept and plus, plus a profit margin, obviously. But the minimum price is something you take if the alternative is a vacant night and it's still worth something. Even if you're a break even, it's still worth something because you're getting a review and the number of reviews. We get into this later. Part eight of my new book is the top 14 ranking factors on Airbnb. Number one is the number of reviews, not the view, not the review rating.

You are just I, this is, this is the accountant in you. I love it. You're like analyzing and gaming and I can't imagine your Excel spread spreadsheet files. I got to love it, right? Last big question here. And I know we got to wrap this up, but here's a big one. This is all fun and Dandy. I know I'm a dork. I'm kind of, you know, geeked out on this right now. Um, what do you recommend to the. The investor that does want to be a little turnkey? Maybe they want to go with Vacasa. They which is a prominent property management company, at least on the west coast. There's all these property management companies that'll say we'll manage your Airbnb for you, but we want 20%, 25%, 30% of gross rev. What do you think? Where's the balance? Should, should someone start managing on their own or do you like property managed property management as a alternative. What's your position on this?

They should go out and buy a product I sell called Elevate host. And I say that because I talk with a lot of hosts. I'm not a fan of property management. If you, if you get a property manager, the best thing you can do is get a local property manager. Do not go with. I won't say any of the names, but do not go with the big ones. They don't care about you. My dad just used one of the big ones. Contrary to my advice. I said, dad, you could use it, but you know you can self manage. All the tools are there and that's what, you know, I was being a little bit facetious with elevate hose. That's what that does. But you can do all that yourself. So you could self manage no matter where you are. I self manage my properties from any and some of them I haven't even seen when I manage other people's properties. My own property I manage. I just got done traveling in Asia for five months. So who should be then? Then who should? Because you need someone on the ground. You need someone on the ground. Who should that be? Who's already there? Your cleaner is a natural property manager. Now you have all the tools to self manage yourself. One hour per week. That's how I advertise it. That's. I take about an hour per week per listing to manage. You have your cleaner there who's a natural property manager. We know that property managers don't do that great of a job. By the way. My dad stopped using them and is self managing as I predicted. About this specific property manager. I've only heard bad things about them. Why would you pay?

We gotta have your dad watch the show so you can get in. Enough I told you so's dad. I love it.

Well, some people, some people have to have to just learn on them on their own, you know, you can give someone golden advice, but if they're not in the right headspace to hear it, they have to go and do it themselves. So, and that's, that's something I've learned myself many times. So I, I'm not a fan of property management. You don't want to pay them 15, 20, 30% when you can do it yourself for an hour. Now, it depends what your hourly rate is. If you make $10,000 a month on your Airbnb and you're spending four hours a month doing it, if your hourly rate is higher than $2,500 an hour, then you should hire someone else to do it. But if it's lower than that, then you should do it yourself.

Daniel, this has just been phenomenal. And I, I want to give you a final word here, but I want to try to give my summary point of why I think this is so powerful. I love the American dream. I love Main Street America. I think property ownership down the street, knowing our communities, renting homes in an arbitrage format, or buying homes where we travel with our family, long term rentals, short term rentals, buying your own building and running to your business, I just think is absolutely critical to building wealth and success. But it can be tricky and it can be challenging and it can be hard, but it can be so fun and rewarding. And I just want my followers to know Daniel is one of those leaders out there that can help you. You got to put in the time, got to learn it, and he's got all the tools. He lays it out on red, you know, silver platter for you, and you can hire him, say, daniel, help me. I don't have the time or walk me through this first few months. So I just am so grateful you're out there helping so many people. I just, I just think it's a neat, neat segment of the industry. Your final advice words tell people what to do.

Well, I just want to say, I just want to say one thing that we didn't touch on, which is not covered in Optimize your bnb, but it is in my new one, and that is vacation rental market analysis. How do you choose where you're going? And so I could go on and on about this. The first main part in my new book is about this. But, but if you choose the right market, everything else is easier. So really focus on that

now.

Yeah, people feel free to reach out to me. By the way, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not that popular. I, I respond to a lot of messages on. On Instagram, for example. I respond to a lot of comments on YouTube, so. So feel free to do that. Email me, send me a chat on my website. I actually have a brand new website coming out in a few weeks that I'm super, super proud of. Um, looks. It looks gorgeous. Like I'm gonna be right.

Yeah, can't wait to see it.

And I have a. As mentioned, the program I have, I have a. I'd like to offer your audience 50% discount if they'd like to join.

Oh, wow. That totally unexpected. My listeners, we did not plan this. We'll get the link and put it in the description real quick. Tell us about the program. It's online to. What do you accomplish when you do that program?

Yeah, the program is. I released in conjunction with the book a little bit after the book. So it's, it's a way to interact with me and a community in a pretty intimate environment. We do calls typically on Mondays. I do questions and answers. I talk about topics like digital guidebook pricing is a big topic, Vacation rental market analysis. You get access to a forum where you get to interact with this community and you got, you get also a bunch of free goodies. So if you're going to buy something from my website anyways, you get I think it's like 500 $477 of free goodies anyways. And then discounts on my main products that we buy. And so I hope to see some of your members there. You could use the discount code. Main Street.

Oh, I like it. Main Street. Dude, you rock. That's. I love it. Okay, and everybody, here's his newest book. I want to repeat this. It is an all in one guide for short term rental hosts and real estate investors. Main title profitable properties. Airbnb Insider Secrets. I tell you, I like your beard on that one too little you look at whatever you're doing there.

Yeah, that that was taken. That those photos were taken. Actually there's a story behind. There's a story about every little piece of this cover photo. But this photo was taken in the my Airbnb which is called the Belmonte Penthouse. And I, I hired one photographer. My buddy wanted to come in last minute and he brought his own photographer and the photographer that I hired, they were shitty photos. The photographer that he bought and he gave, he was like, yeah, it's like your birthday gift. So this, this other photographer took a bunch of photos of me and that's the one that I chose.

Yeah, it looks great, but it is

a good funnel huh? Yeah.

Yeah. Looks awesome. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here. And I love that you're living what you preach and doing what you live, and you're just out there. I'm going to be picking up your book as well. We'll have links to the program, folks, everybody, again, the code for the discount is Main street. And I hope to have you back. And I'll give the full report on my Airbnbs this spring. Maybe we'll have you back in a few months and some new tips and just look forward to really working with you. Thank you, Daniel, for being here.

It was my pleasure. Thank you.