Growing together through STR

Hey everybody and welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tactics, the tools and the training and most importantly, the confidence on how you can get more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan, I'm Mark Simpson's co host and today we are going behind the host of another successful and interesting host who is going to share some tips and some story on how their business got started so you can implement some of the tips into your business and we can all grow together, which is cool. So today we've got Zev and Melissa Forest from Zenius days. They've come all the way from. I know it's virtual, but I still like to say they've come all the way from California, near la. And welcome to the Boostly Podcast.

Zev and Melissa, thank you so much for having us. We're really excited to be here and really just honored to be able to share some of our knowledge with all of your viewers.

Yeah, we're big fans of Boost Lee, big fans of Mark and it's a pleasure being on the, on the podcast with you guys. And you as well, Liam.

Hey, I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys share today and I always pick up bits of knowledge and learn myself, so it's going to be really cool. So Melissa, let's start with yourself. If you can tell us obviously where in the world we know where you are, but where is your properties, what does your business look like, how many units you manage and who do you host, what kind of guests?

Okay, Liam, so right now we're actually sitting in unit number 11. We're in the middle of finishing this unit up and all of our units are located in Southern California, around la, the outskirts of Los Angeles. And where we are in our business is we're in a part of our business where we're no longer just saying that we're Airbnb. We have started our direct booking website and really? Yes. And it honestly all thanks to Mark. We were at an event last year where Mark gave a talk and it really hit home for us and we came home and started that direct booking site and started promoting ourselves as Xenia Stays. Not Airbnb or just strs.

I know people are going to be listening to this. Obviously Melissa and Zev, you work together, you're in the day to day operational needs of the business. So how do you, how do you cope with, with that working with your partner? Any advice or tips that you can share to make that work? Because I, if me and my other half worked together, we'd End up probably killing each other, to be honest.

So, so we hear that a lot. I truly, I think number one is we truly respect each other and our own individual knowledges. We're very different people. The way I think is very different than he thinks. He's very analytical, numbers driven and he's amazing in cells. I'm more hospitality design, you know, running the operations. So we just sat down together and we analyzed, you know, what, what are you going to focus on and what am I going to focus on? And we're going to stay in each other's lanes. So I'm not going to overstep, you know, any decision he makes that has to do with acquisitions or analyzing any deals and he doesn't overstep in anything that has to do with, with whatever I take care of. So we really just admire each other, we respect each other and, and we just. Yeah, well.

Yeah, well, I think what, what it, what was really important was the prerequisite to working together. What really helped was working on our mindset, working on personal development, working on, on building a business mindset too. And, and as well as just getting to know each other personally, that really strengthening our relationship behind the scenes of the business really helped before going full, full, full speed ahead in the business so that we, we learned how to give each other feedback and how to take feedback both on the personal side which then trickled down into the business side giving each other feedback. Like if I had some feedback on the design, which I do a lot. She doesn't, she doesn't, you know, take, tell me to go away and let me handle this. We, we know how to do that with each other and I think, I think I get it that a lot of people can't work together, especially live together, let alone. Right. So I think what has really strengthened our relationship both, it's symbiotic. Working together has strengthened our personal relationship and working together has also in strengthening our personal relationship has then strengthened our business relationship. It's, you know, it kind of works together that way, which is a blessing as well.

What skills would you say are the most transferable skills from your, your background which was in a similar area, I guess property. But what was the transferable skills that you brought with you that are really important now when hosting in short term rentals? And Zev, if we start with yourself and then go over to Melissa.

Sure. So the first thing that comes to mind, I don't know if it's, it's so, so to hosting. So because my background in our business is Acquisitions, getting more properties, whether that's through buying more or are we doing arbitrage or reaching out for co hosting. So I have a very big sales background. So what's helped me in growing our business has been the sales background, learning how to negotiate, learning how to speak with people, learning how to overcome objections, or being able to provide solutions to people's problems. I guess that also could work with hosting as well. We really take a into what people, the feedback that they give us, the problems that they have, and we try to cater to their needs as well to our guests.

What advice would you have for somebody who's looking to get started with more co hosting, more rental arbitrage, how can they find these leads and what have you done in your business, which somebody else may be able to emulate?

Sure. So I'm going to speak more so to the arbitrage side because that was a bigger strength of ours. So I guess would you want to say like the steps to it or how would you want to go about that?

Yeah. If you was to break it down to, I know it's never as simple as a few steps, but break it down to a few steps that somebody would be able to follow.

Of course, that's fine. So you want to make sure that you first want to see where you want to start the business. And we typically say that you want to start your first property within an hour, maybe two hours max, but more so an hour drive from where you are if the city allows it. So the first step you want to do is take a look at the city that you're in, take a look at the neighborhoods, take a look at the communities within an hour, within an hour drive. And you want to go on Airbnb. Well, first and foremost you want to go onto the city website and you want to check the ordinance. It's very, very important because everything you do thereafter, if you don't check the short term rental ordinance first, you will be wasting all of your time thereafter, everything you do after that. So first make sure check, gather the local ordinances for all the cities within an hour around you. Okay. Then after you get those down, you can then do a process of elimination because most likely some of them won't really be friendly for short term rentals, but the friendly ones, then you're going to go and look at those and take a look at the numbers and a lot of seasoned hosts or people that are invested in this business. Go look at like Air DNA or Price Labs data, but you don't really need that to get started, you can just go straight onto Airbnb.com and you can take a look at the properties within the community that you're looking at. And you want to look at the reviews. So you want to see, you know, how much demand is there. And we could judge that based on reviews of all the properties. So if each property around there has about calling an average of 30, 40 reviews, that must mean they've had about 60, 80, 100 people stay at their property, give or take. And now you say, okay, great, so there's some demand there. Then you want to go in and see what their calendar looks like on each of those properties for a month or two months out. If the month, if the following month, let's say we're looking today December 1st, and we want to look at for the whole month of December. If the month is, let's say, I'd say 50% or 75% booked, then it's a fairly great property, it's doing well. So you want to average out all the properties you're gathering and making sure that they have a somewhat booked calendar. After you do that, go on websites that have properties for lease. So out here we have zillow.com, apartments.com hotpads.com and I, I always say treat this process now as if you're going out looking to rent a property yourself, just like you were going to go and move into a property and you look at all the properties and you start calling all the leasing agents or the property owners or the property management companies and you want to go and start pitching your business. And you know, without getting into the whole pitch, you want to show them like that you are a, what you plan to do with the property, you know, what kind of, what kind of business that you operate and the guarantees that you're going to give them and the solutions that you'll provide and how you differentiate yourself between running your business out of their property versus a traditional long term tenant.

Final thoughts or anything you'd like to share just before we bring things to a close.

Just for anyone listening to this, we truly, truly enjoy this business. We love hospitality, we love the folks that we meet in this business that have a passion for it as well. We love providing memories and great stays and homes for people to feel comfortable in. And with that, we love sharing knowledge and teaching others how to start this business, how to operate it in anything we can. So with that being said, we'd love to hear from, from everyone on what questions they have. There's no stupid question. It could be something small or large. And you know, give us a, give us a message on Instagram or on one of our YouTube videos, put a comment in there. And we want to get back to you. We want to, to, to interact with everyone. And yeah, also for the investors out there that have a lot of cash sitting on the sidelines and they want to invest their money into the short term rental space, but they don't really want to be in the operations of it. We are open to that as well. And reach out to us on Instagram or any other platform as well to, to, to do that.

Having a blast, going to get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee, because it's so hard on the tea is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loose.