Integrating Can Monkey for Seamless STR Maintenance

Welcome back to another episode of the Boostly podcast and welcome to another episode of the STR Collab. Now, I couldn't make this session because we were busy with the book Direct Virtual Summit, but we had the Fantastic Alex from CanMonkey join Maddie from Mount and it was a really good discussion stuff. If you want to be part of the STR Collab, we come together at least once a month, bringing guest experts from around the industry, specifically helping those hosts who have got between one and 20 properties. So if you want to find out more, there is a QR code within this video that you can scan to go to our exclusive Facebook group and you can go and find out more. It's totally free. We're looking to do not only virtual meetings like this one was where we meet up at least once a month, but we're also looking to do in person meetups as well. You've got to be in the group to find out more, but without further ado, let's join Maddie and Can Monkey and we'll see you in the next one.

Hey everyone, thanks so much for joining us. We're going to dive in and then today's webinar is an educational webinar brought to you by Alex from CanMonkey. So he's going to be talking all things waste management. What happens when you have to take the trash out and you have multiple properties and just everything along those lines and probably a lot more. I didn't even just cover as a reminder, these webinars and just this community we're building is called the STR Collab. It is brought to you by myself. I'm the CEO and founder of MOUNT we have Mark from Boostly who is semi offline today because he is running his own book Direct summit with over 5,000 attendees, StayFi, which we have Ivan today representing and our newest founding member host gpo. So hopefully we'll be hearing from them shortly as well. So to dive in, just to give you guys some context, if you don't know who I am, I'm Maddie Rifkin. I'm the CEO and founder of MOUNT At MOUNT we're all about guest experience and basically what we do is we go partner with local businesses to bring them online, make them experiences, and then you as a host can curate your list of experiences that you want to offer to your guests via us and you can actually make some commission from that. I did start my company when I was 12 years old, so it's been a journey and a half. We've raised over $4 million for mounts and really are building for this nomadic traveler, this adventure traveler, someone that wants to come and have a good time. So we're happy to be in the industry and definitely love what we continue to learn. So that's about me a little bit about Mark Simpson, although everyone seems to know who he is, so I don't really even need to intro him. But he is all about the book Direct Movement. He's the founder and CEO of Boostly. If you don't know about book direct websites, he's your guy all about getting you off of Airbnb, the OTAs, and really moving you into your book direct strategy and taking your power back, essentially, because Airbnb should not have that. So he typically is on our webinars as a co host, but today not so much. So Mark, we miss you, but he'll be back soon. Arthur is also not here today. He's out of office. But Ivan has joined us from StayFi. So Ivan, I'll let you take the mic now.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. Of course, Arthur. But I'm Ivan. I'm program manager at StateFi. We're also about all about the book Direct Movement. Our mission is to help all program managers and hosts build a strong independent brand that helps drive direct bookings, repeat bookings on, as we call it, break free from OTAs. We do that mainly through Wi Fi marketing and guest data collection through Wi Fi. And we also offer email marketing and text marketing services to provide a whole guest journey experience where you can connect to your guests after they've stayed and get them to stay directly with you in a direct site.

Fantastic. Thank you, Ivan. Awesome. Onto the next. So we added some new segments here. First of all, the STR collab. If you guys don't know what this is, this is really the community we're building. There's three core pillars of our we do monthly webinars and we have a Facebook group where kind of our online community lives. We also have launched in person events so around the country if you want to host one, if someone in the co lab wants to host one, we help support that. And then we also do events at conferences under the Str Colab name. So there might be a fun one coming towards the end of the year at Burma International. We'll have to wait and hear what that one is. But if you want to be part of the collab, go ahead and scan this QR code because it'll allow you to join the Facebook group where you can see all our previous recordings because we do monthly educational webinars on just various topics that you need to become a better host and level up your your listings and your properties and the full work. So if you do want to join the Facebook group, that's what you can do here. Other than that, a few news tidbits because this is really interesting stuff happening this week. If you didn't notice, Marriott Homes and Villas launched and tested a new generative AI search tool so their travelers can actually now input stuff and it'll spit out search results based on this AI tool. They actually beat Airbnb to the punch on this one. So Airbnb has not launched their AI tool, although they did acquire a very large AI business recently. So you know, first I think segment where Airbnb is not the first to do it, so interesting competition on the landscape and then additionally is kind of a bigger bucket item. But Florida is cracking down or at least trying to crack down on Airbnbs and just the regulation of short term rentals. There's a bill in the House that has the potential to change the vacation property regulations across the entire state. So it would put it at a state level instead of a county level. Something to just be aware of. And if you aren't in Florida, that's fine as well. But I put this on here because if you're not involved in your local advocacy group or even through rent responsibly like this would be your time to do that because better to be driving the policy than being in the backseat and having to deal with the changes that come. And I know Alex knows this really well, having been in Arizona where they are quite strict these days. But you know, better to be on the advocacy side of it and fight for it than not. So thought I'd throw that in here. Awesome. Well, some upcoming events in case you want to meet in person, a few of us will probably be at these. We have the VRMA Spring Forum, the Can Stays Rental Alliance Conference. We have some events in the UK if you happen to be across the pond, and then the Northwest Vacation Rental Conference as well in Boise, Idaho. Alex, I don't know if I missed any events that you guys are going to.

No, those, the VRMA and the Northwest one I'm going to be attending. But I don't think anything else that I know of in April besides those ones.

Yes. So if you, if you can't tell, April is going to be a busy month for all of us. Had to pick and choose. Well, without further ado, this is where I introduce you to Alex Shapiro the founder and CEO of CanMonkey. I put a little catchy title on here, but I bet he's talking about even cooler things. What do you do about garbage day, Alex? I'm going to turn it over to you because I believe you have a presentation and this is supposed to be educational. So for those on the webinar, if you want to put in questions, put them in the Q and A. If you have funny things to say, put them in the comments. We control Alex a little and really just have a good time as we talk about waste management solutions and honestly just learn what this is all about.

We were established in 2018 and a lot of people even asked, what is CamMonkey? CamMonkey we automate trash day. Very simple. That weekly tedious task that comes up every week. Taking the trash can to the curb day before pickup, returning it after it's getting empty by the city, back to its original location and recycling cans. That's what we take care of. It's there to never miss trash day to avoid cans getting overflow with extra trash, not getting in trouble with hoas, keeping your neighbors happy. It's an essential service for vacation rental properties is what we found. It's not what we started off as. We started off as homeowners, but we realized the niche in the short term rental industry. Management companies that have 10, 20, 100 properties. This gets really hard and people don't really have a system or solution for it. And if they do, what we found is sometimes it's 50 to 75% at best. And what we created on the back end is a platform that is our own technology, our own proprietary technology where essentially a homeowner, an Airbnb, a property management company can put their properties on our platform, go into our website and that property automatically gets put into a operational route that is already existing. That property will go onto a route. If we, if it is next to a property that we already have, it's even better for us and we just start servicing it from there on out every month until someone cancels it. We're a monthly subscription. We're not trying to hold anyone hostage with contracts. We really just try to keep this as easy as possible. We know that sometimes properties come and go with different management companies and we're not trying to hold anyone hostage, but essentially the property comes on to platform, get it into a route and the can runners take it to the curb and back. Very simple, nothing really complicated about it. And what the technology in the back end really helps us make sure that we're dotting our eyes and crossing our T's, making sure it's actually getting done. Why Cam Monkey? We know now, since we've been around for five, almost six years, that there's other companies doing what we do now. It's not very hard taking cans to the curb and back. You don't really need much except a body and a car to get you to those locations. But what we have found that when we invested our money into our technology, it really helped us create more transparency. I like to call it transparency, but more transparency for our clients. We have a client dashboard that you receive for your 1 property or 100 properties. You can see them all in one location. You can see when we were at your property, when we took the can to the curb, when we took it back. And if you have any other notes that come up, say you put a gate on the code, the client has access to, go in there and change things. Some of our clients have padlocks on the locks. Sometimes they change every quarter or whatnot. They can go in there and update all the information. They have a guest coming with an animal. They can let us know that there's an animal staying there to give us a heads up. But we really give our clients the ability to update their account because each property is different, and that gives us the information. We're really good instruction takers. That's what we tell people. If the cans are on the side of the gate with the gate lock, you know, let us know that. What's all that information so we can take the can to the curb efficiently. Like I said, we take photos. That's something that's different than other companies that we provide these for you. We're not trying to hide anything. We get calls from people because maybe a client got a call from a guest or got a call from a housekeeper saying that the cans are full, that you guys never took the cans out last week. Well, if they didn't want to look in the dashboard themselves, we have that information too, so we can show them. Hey, the property. Is this your property? We did get the cans of the curbing back, you know, Is this all correct? Oh, yeah. Like, why is it still full? Did you have someone check out afterwards? You know, maybe, you know, the cleaners came in after we were done, and maybe they filled it up after. So this kind of helps us kind of come up to some different scenarios, because at the end of the day, these properties, for the most part, are now public. They're not private. And sometimes there are neighbors that know that's an Airbnb and sometimes they throw their trash in those cans. Or maybe like I said, the cleaner came after we empty. Brought an empty can back and then they filled up the can with. With trash after they clean the property. So there's always moving parts in these properties, but we make sure that keep everything documented when we're at the property to make sure that we're doing an efficient job. Also showing that the cans are back at the location that they need to be on the right day. If there's any issues at the property, you would get an issue and you get a real time notification. In this example right here, this property, we brought the cans back and the client put a padlock on.

Oh, just a heads up. I think we're still seeing the first slide.

Oh, you're still in the first slide?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I'm over here looking at all these different things right now, and you guys are still in the first one. Oh, my. Jeez. I think.

Go on to the canva tab and scroll from there.

That's right here.

Yeah, now you're good.

Okay, so now you can see all this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that works.

Monkey. Okay. Okay. What is Cam Monkey? Thank you for that, Ivan. What is Cam Monkey? Automate Trash Day. Our platform. Homeowners, Airbnb property managers put them on our platform or application. That property automatically gets put on a route where we take the cans to the curve on the day before and then return them after they're emptied. Why Cam Monkey? Here's our client dashboard, an example of what it looks like. Here's your property address. You can see the days that we were at the property taking the cans to curb and take the cans back. There's timestamp notifications right there. Photos of the cans at the curb and back. If there is an issue, you get a real time notification sent to your email or get sent to your your text message. Like I said, this example right here, we brought these cans back and they put a padlock on the gate that we didn't know. So we let them know, hey, we can't get in behind the gate. We left the cans right here. Can you guys. The property manager, can you make sure that these get behind the gate now? Because we can't do it. So making sure that we have open lines of communication and showing the photos is key to making sure that even though we're doing a simple task of taking the cans of the curb back, different idiosyncrasies come up. So we're making sure that we're protected on all ends and making sure that they know as well what's going on in their property. Because sometimes these hosts and owners don't even live in the right state or live in the state. They're managing it from another state. And they're really using us for their eyes and ears on these properties and making sure that everything is getting done efficiently. They use their guests and cleaners instead of cam monkey. And what we found is that 50 to 75% at best. You know, sometimes the cleaners are there on the day to take the cans to the curb, but who's going back the next day taking the can back? Or you ask the guests to do it, but they forget to do it. And now you're left with trash that's overflowing and you get that removed. And it's just going to cost you even more money calling 1-800-JUNK REMOVAL or a local junk company to come and remove all that trash for you than it would have been just having Kamunkey service it every week for you, making sure that it was done. We also help our clients stay compliant with HOA regulations and different city ordinances. Kind of what Matt alluded to. Some of these states are really cracking down on some of our industry. And one of the easiest things that we found for us is that a lot of neighbors complain about their. The Airbnb next to them, the trash can at the curb with the city ordinances and regulations with these HOAs. Some of these have to be back at a certain time. The cans or that can't be at the curb that long. And these guests or these neighbors who are not really happy with the Airbnb next door, they'll use this as a way to get them in trouble. I remember I had a conversation with Gov os once and they showed me an example in Sedona where the neighbor next door had called like 200 times in a month complaining about the. The property that was an Airbnb that the trash can was out. And it was like 601-603-605. Just kept calling the same day, just kept saying, you know, so it wasn't really a problem. It's more like a neighbor problem just calling to complain. But with us, we had that proof, knowing that the can is back at a certain time or at the curb where we have already gotten our clients out of these erroneous fines because we're able to show these timestamp photos saying, hey, actually your can was back behind the curb or back behind the gate at 555 and getting them out of these, you know, fines. Making happy neighbors is another reason why can Monkey neighbors like to know that, you know, someone's getting these cans managed. We've actually got a lot of clients signed up from us that are homeowners because the neighbor next door was an Airbnb property, and they could see someone coming to their property four times a week, 16 times a month, taking these trash and recycling cans back. And they say, hey, what is that? And they find out it's Cam Monkey, and they say, I want that. So neighbors are happy when someone's managing the can, the curb, making sure trash cans are not sitting at the curb way over long, sometimes days, you know, bringing them back for you. Cam Monkey is a monthly subscription. Like I said, we're starting at $49 for one trash, one recycling can in most of our markets. There's some markets that have trash twice a week. A little bit different, you know, pricing, but we try to keep our pricing as low as or as close to $49 when we can. If you have multiple cans, there could be an extra, extra charge as well for more cans. Some of our properties have six trash cans, four recycling cans. They sleep 12, 15 people. So those take a little bit more time taking those cans to the curbs that we have to charge a little bit more. But it's still very competitive in our pricing. We also also offer on demand trash removal. So if any instances, instances like maybe trash gets picked up and you have guests checking out on Sunday with new guests checking in on Monday, you don't want the new guests to see the old guest trash. That's where we would come in and remove all that trash from the property so the new guests don't see the old guest trash. Even though you're three days away from the city coming. Some of our clients will have this scheduled automatically on all their departure dates, just making sure they're always clean. Everyone runs their properties in business differently, but we will adapt to what our clients would want and imply those solutions for them. We also offer can cleaning subscriptions, whether it's monthly or quarterly. We found quarterly is more likely for a lot of our clients. They don't really need it all the time. So quarterly subscriptions, where if your cans are stinky, especially in Florida and Arizona and some of these markets that are really hot during the summertime, put trash in there and all fish or whatever guests put in there, it gets really gross. And so having another solution, making sure those cans are clean for when guests are at your property. It's just helping with the whole aesthetics of everything. Cam Monkey just got on the Inc. 5000 list for our southwest region as one of the fastest private growing companies. And we also made the skiff Tech Knowledge travel tech company top 250 as well. So we're getting some momentum as a small startup company getting our name out there helping individuals or hosts and owners with our solution. And we're really honored to be able to do that and keep providing the same service to everyone and, and continue to grow. Currently we're in over 20 states, over 135 cities across the country. You can see that we're, we're still not in some, you know, South Dakota, North Dakota. I'm not sure you know, how big they are in short term rentals, but we haven't had any interest there. But there are some markets that we have interested in that we're, we're not in yet. For us to get into a new market, we need anywhere from 20 to 25 properties to get started. Doesn't have to be all with one management company. It could be several management companies. Maybe one has five, one has 10, one has 15 properties. With all those combined, we can put a route together and get started within five to seven business days. And if you don't have anyone like Bluey, as you know his bingo and Bluey take the cans out for their family. If you don't have anyone for that, please give Cam Monkey a call and we'd love to see how we can add you on a route that's already operational or get started in a new market. And that's my presentation, having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee because it's so hard and the T is loose.

Leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.