80 Units at Age 24: A Huge Success Story

Okay, welcome to another episode on the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence that you can go out there and get some more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan and I'm the co host on the Boostly podcast with Mark Simpson. So today we're going behind the host. This is where we look at successful and interesting short term rental hosts from around the business. Today we've found one in the UK who I'm looking forward to going through these questions as somebody I've known for a long time, long time and I consider a friend. And also I've learned a lot from him. So I'm sure he's going to share some tips and some really interesting and inspiring sort of stories really, because to do what he's done, certainly at his age, he makes me feel very old is absolutely amazing. So today we are going behind the host with Josh Guest from Guest Homes. Welcome along Josh.

Thanks Liam. Thanks for having me on. Looking forward to it.

Well, welcome so much and it's awesome to have you here. You know, it's just, this is going to be fun. So let's start off by you giving yourself an introduction. Who is Josh Guest and what do you enjoy most about hosting?

Yeah, so my name is Josh Guest, 24 years old. We manage and own slash rent to Rent. We've got a portfolio of 80 properties across the UK and the main thing that I like about hosting really is giving a good experience to customers and also to clients. I kind of see those two as the main aspects to the business because 70% of our portfolio now is managed. So the clients are really important and also the customer experience is really important and we've been more heavily focusing on that probably in the last 12 months to make sure because I think that's quite a big one that a lot of people sort of skip over the actual customer journey and the customer experience making sure that it's top level and it's for, it's making sure it's top level for the customer, not where you think the customer should be. Actually making sure the customer is actually rating it sort of 10 out of 10 experience doesn't mean you're going to get a 10 out of 10 review, but that's what you're always aiming for. But you want to give them a 10 out of 10 experience.

Can you tell us a bit more about the business? So where in the world you host, if there is one specific place and you mentioned the number of models and what kind of guest avatar you tend to host as well?

Yeah, sure. So we've got three different parts of business. So we own a few properties we've just been buying this year and then we manage about 55 properties and then we have just over 20 rent to rent properties or rent to SA properties. The areas that we work in predominantly now is around Worcestershire, slash to Cotswold, Hereford, Cheltenham, that sort of area. And then we do also have properties in Norfolk and in Brighton. We've got one in London as well and then some in Swansea.

You've also got the rent to rent or rental arbitrage, which is. Is how some people listening will know it. And then you've got some your own, which of course you're fully in control of. Is it purposeful that you've done that kind of split across the portfolio and is there. What would you say the advantages are and the, I guess the drawbacks of each of those kind of strategies?

Yeah, 100%. So originally, because I didn't have enough cash to buy property, I originally started the rent to rent or rent to SA and, and then once I built up a decent cash flow of on that, I actually kind of seen it as I needed to be ads that was. That's always the highest cash flowing method. And I always thought of it as, well, I need, I want to be able to support the business with the rent to sas, as in support my own salary. As the business that are growing, even the teams that are growing, I want to be able to support the, like the premises and the team with the rent to sas. And then, and then I started adding on management. People started to ask me to manage their properties and I thought, oh, this is a great additional income as well. So then started to scale up the management side of things. And then that was also I kind of classed that as like a, as a bonus at the time. So then we were split. So because I didn't want it to be all risk heavy into one strategy. So if anything goes wrong, say like even like, say like when Covid happened, if you were. We were still making some profits off our rent to SAE because we just diversified the strategy a little bit. Well, quite a bit to be honest. Obviously it didn't have to be completely different. Clientele was put in there. But if it was management, we'd have probably lost a lot of our revenue because the turnover would have been a lot lower. So then we'd have made a lot lower profit. So I think it's good having a diversity risk now. We are mainly scaling up the management side because I kind of feel that's the quicker option to scale because we want to try and get to a thousand units by six years time. So that's kind of the plan at the moment. And I feel like that's the quickest option to scale. And also I feel like we can also we can offer a really good service to our clients as well, make them more money and it's a win win for everyone. And then the purchase options obviously is just a complete separate avenue which basically some of the profit that we're making from the business, I want to keep buying more and more property and class that as complete long term investments. Obviously it's brilliant what we're making on the profit wise on it, but just keep that into a complete separate pot and just keep reinvesting that. And then I can use that whenever I want to use that either if I ever exit a business or if anything extreme happens, then there's always that side income there as well.

I think it's one of the things which is interesting certainly for me who's also growing a short term rental business is that when I first came into short term rental I didn't really understand why people, people do certain strategies. But the rent to rent is by far the quickest way to get some cash flowing and to learn the systems or rental arbitrage. It just is, isn't it? And even now some of the rent to rents are way more profitable than, you know, sort of the management side of things. But the benefit of that management, like you say is it just diversifies risk. You, you, you basically got the opportunity to earn off somebody's asset and to help them make more money, but with none of the downsides. You're not having to buy the property, you're not having to buy the furniture, you're not having, you know, all that cool stuff which is just giving you such a benefit. And then of course like you say it just makes sense, then you've even de risked further by then owning a property, you're in full control, you've actually got an asset and it just seems like such a nice journey. And I know people who listen to this will go, hey, that makes sense. That is something which is a good business model to do which is to start off with one of those models and work your way up. And for me the thing that really helped was having rent to rent. You learn the systems before jumping straight in on co hosting or management because you don't know what you don't know until you start hosting, which is cool.

So I think, yeah, you got to make. That was kind of another thing, actually kind of make mistakes and learn everything yourself first. So I felt like I couldn't manage a property. This would be the same for, like, I don't know, when people, like, educate people or whatever. So if. If you haven't done it yourself first, how can you offer that to somebody else? So I felt like I had to do rent to rent first because I needed to learn those areas, make sure it works, give a proven model, and then I've got statistics, figures, facts, everything. And then I can be like, bang. Here's this to a management client. This is what I think we can earn. Obviously, the market can change with any circumstances, but this is what exactly what we've. And this is exactly what our property looks like. And it gives a good example then to. To them.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. So, yeah, that brings us to the end of this behind the Host sort of podcast. Is there anything I missed? Any questions or final thoughts before we bring things to a close? Josh?

No, that's brilliant. Thank you for having me on.

Thank you for joining us. And again, thank you to you as our listener for Boostly. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention, and we really thank you for spending it with us here at Boostly. So that's it from Josh and that's it for me. We'll see you on the next one. Thanks very much. Bye for now.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee? Cause it's so hard on the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.