The Secret Ingredient To Operating Your Airbnbs Remotely | The STRR Podcast #68 | Tim Hubbard

There's a lot of things that go into operating our rentals remotely from wherever we are in the world. But I've got a secret ingredient for you today that might trump all of them. Stay tuned. Let's jump in. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. Quick, actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. I'm super excited about today's topic. I know I probably say that every episode, but, but this one is really good. I have a book that I just read that I have to share with you and share how it applies to our rental business, to our short term rentals, to our life really. And it really is one of the main secrets to operating our properties remotely from wherever we are in the world. So let's jump right in. The book that I just finished, I actually listened to the audio version, which I would recommend because you get to hear some conversation in their question and answer. But the book is called who, not how and it's by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. And it's essentially asking us to think about who we can have to help us with our teams, we can have to help us with our rentals or our businesses in general instead of how we can do those things or how we can accomplish those things ourselves. And this really is a big secret because obviously if we're living far away from our rentals, we cannot do all the hows. We are not there. Right. So we have to have people to help us. So I want to jump in. I took a lot of nuggets out of this book and I'm going to share my favorites with you and how I think it applies with our business. And just I hope by the end of this episode it's got you thinking how you might be able to change some things in your business, in your life or with your rentals. Man, there's so many nuggets in this book, but let's just start off with one. That if we find the right who, the right team member, the right person to help us with our business, then the how becomes unnecessary. The who will figure it out for us. So we need to change from asking ourselves, how can I do this? To who can help me achieve this goal, who can help me with this? And now that's pretty hard to do because we've grown up. Our educational systems, they're all designed and trained for us to do things on our own. Right? You don't. A lot of times, you know, at least when I was growing up, we didn't get to share homework. We didn't get to share tests. You know, those are very individual. We need to figure out how to do them, how to come up with the answers. But that's not real life. Real life is about teams. And if we look limit ourselves to just our thinking and how we can do things well, we're going to have a very, very hard time expanding, and we're never going to be able to expand to the point where we could if we have a great team with us. So this is a totally different mindset, and it's necessary if you want to operate your rentals remotely or if you really want to grow your business. So here's a few lines that I just pulled out of the book. How limits us to our own resources and time. If we're asking ourselves, how can I do this? How can I set up this new property? How can I go about doing the due diligence on this property? How can I find a new housekeeper, Whatever it is, if we're asking ourselves how well, we're automatically giving up our time. So how decreases our freedom of time when we're thinking that way. Now, who is about getting our desired results as efficiently as possible? And this isn't about taking advantage of people or anything like that. And I'm going to get to that a little bit later in the episode. But who immediately connects you with more knowledge and capability? We can grow so much larger if we have the right who's around us and the right team who expands our vision of what is possible because we no longer see ourselves as the sole means of a accomplishing whatever task or goal we've set out to achieve. With more people on the bus, with more people on our team, our vision will be bigger than we ever really imagined. My business has been growing pretty well. Luckily, I've had a lot of success with the rentals, and luckily I've been able to achieve a lot of that remotely. I think part of that might be because I'm just like, inherently trusting in other people. So it's been a little easier for me to. To trust someone with tasks that I was maybe a little nervous about in the beginning. And, you know, that's worked against me a few times, unfortunately, but it's definitely helped me much more than it's worked against me. And there's no way that I could be where I'm at right now or that my team could be where we are right now if we weren't all working together. Just wouldn't happen. So you might think that by finding the right who that you're taking advantage of someone or something like that. But the way this should work is that in the process of us finding the right who, the right people for our team, that we become their who. A lot of who's and how's here. I know, but hopefully that makes sense. We hopefully find the right people to where we can help them grow as well. And. And without us working together, it wouldn't be as possible for either of us. So I'll get to a couple other things. Another point I found really interesting in this book is they talked about procrastination and how procrastination is really just like an inner wisdom telling you that you are not the right person for the job, that you're not the right person for the task. You're putting it off for some reason or other. And I know I do this with several pieces of my business, and that's probably because I just haven't found the right who for that part of the business yet. But think about that. Procrastination is really an inner wisdom telling you that you're maybe not the right person to be doing that task. And the cool thing about this is that when we find a who to help us with whatever this is, whatever we're procrastinating about, chances are they're much better at it than we are too. You know, the things that I procrastinate on are also the things that I personally, I don't think I'm that good at. So we can find people that are better at the things we don't want to do and that enjoy it more than us. Some people don't like numbers. Well, that's why we have accountants. Some people maybe don't like dealing with guests. Well, that's why we have receptionists and people that do like dealing with guests and customer service. So for anything that you're procrastinating about, just. Just think about it. There will be someone else out there that enjoys doing what you don't want to do more than you do and will be better than you at it. Now you might be thinking, yeah, Tim, this all sounds great. Easy peasy. I can't afford to hire the right people or I don't have the extra funds. But a lot of times it's that we can't afford not to hire this person. They help us grow faster than we could buy ourselves, save time and save money. So many times I've worked with people that maybe cost a little more in their profession, but in the end, everything Went super smooth, there was no stress, and it ended up better than had I gone with a cheaper version or something like that. So just keep that in mind. A lot of times we can't afford not to hire the right person. And a lot of people starting out, this first person might be your virtual assistants when you have helping you, but I guarantee you, when you find that right person, they're going to help you make more money and they're going to save so much time for you and they're going to be good at doing a lot of the things that you maybe don't like doing. So there are some caveats to this. You know, as we're building our teams and we're finding our who's, and one of the big ones I took away from the book, and this totally rings true, is that if we look at people on our team as costs, you know, it costs this much per hour or costs as much per year or whatever it is, they're going to recognize that, that we see them as a cost. So we need to switch from that and we need to switch to thinking about them or the who's or the people on our team as an investment. Because investments help us both grow. We invest in them and by investing in them, it helps our business grow. They become our who and we can become their who and we all grow together. And it's hard not to do, you know, I mean, if you have a position that you're hiring for and you're not currently paying anyone for that position, well, then it's hard not to think about those costs. But just try to think about it as an investment and the benefit that you can get from it. Now, just because we find the right who doesn't mean that we don't need boundaries in the book. One of the great points that they make is that you can have the right who, but if you don't have vision of clarity where you're going, where your company's going, what goals you have, well, then performance can actually go down. If you are giving the who's, the people on your team more autonomy, more autonomy to make their own decisions, there still needs to be some clarity of vision of where we're all headed together. And there needs to be some review to make sure that we're all on the same page and review with our short term rentals. That can come down simply to the reviews that we're getting from our guests and we can relay that information back to our team. So keep that in mind. There needs to be some review I like to do video calls with my team now on Zoom. I think you can have a 10 minute phone conversation or you can have a 10 minute Zoom video call. And I think the video call, if you're operating or remotely or you're looking for team members in another place, it's going to be much, much more effective. It's going to allow you to continue building your relationship, I think a lot faster than just a simple phone call. So make sure you have some vision with your goals, clarity, where you're going with your properties, with your management, with your guest management, with your apartment setups. With all of that, have some clarity and have a way to to review that regularly. Many wise investors I've heard time and time again they'll say that in real estate they would actually prefer a B class property with A class management than an A class property with B class management. It really comes down to the people that we work with, the people we surround ourselves with, and how our whole team interacts. So the next time you're looking to fill a position or the next time you discover your procurement procrastinating on the same thing all the time, think about it. There might be a person that will fit in this role. And together you guys can achieve way more than you could by yourself. I hope you got some tips out of this. Check out the book, it's called who not How. It's by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. We'll put a link in the show notes, of course. Total game changer. Download the audiobook, check it out and until next time, have a wonderful day. Want to get on the fast track to financial freedom through short term rentals? Well, it all starts with the properties you acquire. But you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties. I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. Just go to restmethods.com that's R E S T methods.