Behind The Host with Kyle Stanley
24 Aug 2022 · 3 min
Kyle Stanley runs a short-term rental portfolio across California and Arizona with 2021 revenue of $2.1M, split between co-hosted units, owned properties, and arbitrage deals. He uses AirDNA for market research, Hostaway for property management, and keeps his own work to 2-3 hours weekly by building a team of a COO, cleaning manager, VAs, and in-house cleaners trained to bring solutions instead of problems.
Questions this episode answers
Fresno, CA; Bass Lake, CA; Phoenix and Scottsdale, AZ.
About 50 co-hosted; ~7–8 owned; ~7–8 arbitrage.
Approximately $2.1 million in 2021; goal to 3x that in 2022.
Schlage locks; AirDNA for market evaluation.
Currently using iGMS; migrating to Hostaway.
Chapters
All right, welcome everybody back to another episode of the Boostly podcast. We're doing behind the Host series and we're at the short term rental wealth conference in Nashville. I'm picking people from behind the scenes to come and have a chat and we're digging into the tools, the tactics and what they're doing behind the scenes in their business to run it. And today we've got the amazing Kyle Stanley. He's on my left. And so, Kyle, could you please introduce yourself where you are in the world, business and all that jazz and then we'll get started.
All right. Yeah. So we are in Fresno, California, Bass Lake, California, and also Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona. We are a combination of all three models. I believe in diversity. So we have about 50 that we co host and then we have another 7 or 8 that we own and another 7 or 8 that we arbitrage. And in 2021 we grossed about 2.1 million and we want to 3x that here in 2022. Awesome.
Thank you very much. Okay, so let's dig into the tools that you're using behind the scenes. So can you just please give down on, say, the tech stack, the pms? Like what. What are you using behind the scene that helps run everything and also break down like the. The staff members you have behind the scenes, please?
Yeah. So all of our locks are schlage. Everything I'm doing in regards to taking a look at market eval, I'm. I'm a market eval nerd. So I love being able to use air DNA for that and then just really keeping it simple. As a PMS, we use IGMs right now, but we're actually moving over to host away. Main reason for that is because we're. It's a little bit more customizable and we're able our owners be on the same page as us. Like I said with having 50 CO units, it's tough to have to answer a lot of questions with these owners. And so we find that Hostaway is going to be a better fit for us on that. I have two employees. One of them is our coo. She is in charge of every single operation. And so every time there is any sort of person for me to check in with, she's the only person that I have a check in with. And then our cleaning manager. And we have a number of cleaners that also get checked by a quality control manager. She's not an employee, but she's about the closest thing to it. And then three VA's and like I mentioned tons of cleaners. They're all in house because we like to be able to bonus our cleaners, train our cleaners, and have them adopt our systems and not have to go to a cleaning company and try to, you know, get them to do things our way. We found it to be a lot easier if we find, you know, that maybe call it mom or college student or babysitter that just wants some extra income and has a little bit of time during the hours of three to four or, sorry, 11 to four, we can train them, give them another source of income, and adopt them into our company. And that's been the easiest way for us to have killer reviews as well.
Okay, so last question. Can you just sort of break down your working week? So what is a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? As the owner of the business, runner of the business, how does. How do you break down your working week? And if you've got anything that you can relate, as in books that you've read that's helped get that sort of structure in place, that'd be amazing.
Yeah, Great question. The Four Hour Workweek is a huge book that helped me. And literally, we put in about. I put in about two to three hours of work per week on my actual Airbnb business Monday, I meet with my team, and they show I. They basically show me everything that happened from the last week, and I tell them, okay, there. Tell me more about that and how we fix that problem so that there's that trust that I have, but also verifying. And then we also have those things where I'm just like, okay, you know, we don't need to talk about that. I trust that you have that. I know you've done this a million times. We don't need to talk about that. Let's talk more so about maybe some systems that we can improve, some ways that we can start to maybe bring in and fill in some holes that are needed to be filled. And so legitimately, Mark, every single time that we start a work week, that's the only time I expect to put any time into the business. But of course, we get those calls about once. I get a call about once or twice a week from my COO informing me of something or, hey, I need this help. But one of our values in our company is bring me solutions, not problems. And what that's allowed me to do is empower my team so that when they do have an issue, they don't think to themselves, well, I need Kyle to go fix it. They start to say, okay, If I bring this to Kyle, he's going to ask me what my solution is. And so most of the time that forces them to create a solution and they realize, oh, we don't really need to call Kyle.
Final one then. So everybody here knows about Facebook and Facebook groups. Kyle, can you please just break down your Facebook group that you founded, tell everybody how they can find it, and let's talk a little bit about the community and the coaching company that you have also founded as well, please.
Yeah, we have Airbnb Masterminds, which has over 125,000 members to date. I wish I could say I know the exact strategy for that, but I don't. It just kind of caught fire and people started joining. That's been a lot of fun because I get to interview people like Mark in the group and everyone gets to get exposed to leading industry leaders within the business. And so for that reason, we're providing a lot of value in that free group. And then of course, if you're wanting to streamline your business and, you know, bypass as many mistakes as possible, you still have to make mistakes, but being able to bypass a lot of them and get the roadmap to success. We of course have our six figure formula shirt. I'm wearing six FF Six Figure formula, which is a one year program that we literally coach everyone through on how to be able to create a six figure business in under 12 months. Just like I've done, just like a very large number of my students have been able to do. And just being able to take the emotion out of this business and turn it into a step by step formula so that you're just following a path and not, you know, I mean, I think the number one issue that people get into is they do business based on a feeling. We're trying to help you remove that and just turning it into a system. Yeah, absolutely. So in Instagram is the easiest way to get me at fearlesskyle. My website is fearlesskyle.com and the YouTube channel is the Fearless Investor. And then on Facebook, just go ahead and join Airbnb Masterminds.
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