PASSIVE INCOME: How I Automate 100+ Airbnb Properties
Summary
TLDRThe speaker shares their experience in automating an Airbnb business with over 100 properties. They emphasize the importance of creating a structured organization with specialized roles, such as territory managers, housekeepers, and guest experience managers. The key to automation is understanding what to automate and building systems that support people, not replacing them. The video offers advice on hiring, managing, and growing a business to achieve true valuation and scalability, highlighting the need for trust and continuous improvement.
Takeaways
- 😀 Automating an Airbnb business is achievable and the speaker has done it with over 100 properties.
- 🛠 The secret to automation is knowing what to automate rather than just how to automate it.
- 📈 The goal of any business should be automation to increase its true valuation and facilitate selling if desired.
- 🏢 The speaker's business is organized with a clear hierarchy, including territory managers, specialized roles, and a large housekeeping staff.
- 🧹 Housekeeping is a critical part of the business and should be automated by hiring and training housekeepers, paying them by the hour.
- 👥 The importance of having a housekeeping manager who can oversee operations and prevent burnout as the business grows.
- 📚 Reading books like 'The Leadership Pipeline' and 'Multipliers' is recommended for understanding business and leadership.
- 🔄 As the business grows, systems should be developed to support staff and prevent a single manager from becoming overwhelmed.
- 💡 Technology should be used to support people, not replace them, and to handle repetitive tasks efficiently.
- 🚀 Continuous growth and challenging the business is important to keep employees engaged and invested in the company.
- 🔑 Trusting people and giving them autonomy is a key part of successful automation and delegation.
Q & A
What is the primary goal of automating an Airbnb business according to the speaker?
-The primary goal of automating an Airbnb business is to remove oneself from the company operations, allowing it to have a true valuation and be sellable without the owner's direct involvement.
What is the estimated worth of the speaker's Airbnb business?
-The speaker estimates their business to be worth around 20 million if they were to sell it now.
How does the speaker structure the management of their Airbnb business?
-The speaker structures their business with Haley at the top overseeing everything, followed by territory managers, specialized managers for tasks like listing setup, revenue, guest experience, landlord relations, and a large team of housekeepers managed by housekeeping managers.
What is the speaker's advice on hiring housekeepers for an Airbnb business?
-The speaker suggests hiring housekeepers with no prior experience, training them in-house, and paying them by the hour to build loyalty and reduce costs.
Why should housekeepers be paid by the hour instead of a flat rate according to the speaker?
-Paying housekeepers by the hour can lower housekeeping costs and provide more funds for other business aspects. It also helps to avoid competition from other industry players who might try to recruit experienced housekeepers.
What is the speaker's suggestion for the first step in automating a growing Airbnb business?
-The first step is to hire a housekeeping manager to oversee housekeepers, communicate with guests, and handle inventory control, which can automate about 80 to 90 percent of the business operations.
What books does the speaker recommend for managers in an automated business?
-The speaker recommends 'The Leadership Pipeline' by Ram Charan and 'Multipliers' for improving leadership and getting better work out of people.
What is the speaker's view on using technology to automate an Airbnb business?
-The speaker believes that technology should be used to support people in the business, not to replace them. It should be used to handle repetitive tasks and increase the efficiency of a single person's capabilities.
What is the speaker's advice on maintaining quality in an automated business?
-The speaker advises to 'continue to inspect what you expect' and to include seemingly useless high-touch tasks in the system to monitor employee engagement and ensure quality.
What is the speaker's strategy for keeping employees engaged and invested in the business?
-The speaker emphasizes building a culture and vision with constant growth and challenges, ensuring that employees see the business as dynamic and not a dead-end.
What is the speaker's approach to trust in the context of business automation?
-The speaker believes in giving full autonomy and trust to managers, like Haley, to the point where they could potentially destroy the business, as a trade-off for achieving automation.
Outlines
🛠️ Automating Airbnb Business: The Key to Valuation
The speaker discusses the possibility of fully automating an Airbnb business, sharing personal experience with over 100 properties. The secret lies in knowing what to automate rather than just how to do it. The video promises to reveal what aspects to automate and provides professional tips on how to achieve it. The goal of automation is to increase the business's valuation by removing the personal dependency from the company's operations, which is essential for a successful sale. The speaker introduces their organizational structure, emphasizing the importance of specialized roles and the delegation of tasks to managers and housekeepers.
📚 Building Systems and Supporting Staff for Business Growth
This paragraph delves into the importance of building systems and hiring support staff to prevent burnout and ensure business scalability. The speaker suggests reading 'The Leadership Pipeline' and 'Multipliers' to develop leadership and management skills. As the business grows, the need for additional managers and specialized roles arises to handle various tasks such as housekeeping, guest interactions, and revenue management. The speaker emphasizes the importance of creating systems that not only streamline operations but also serve as indicators of employee engagement and performance.
💡 The Role of Technology in Supporting People and Business Growth
The final paragraph highlights the role of technology as a support tool for people within a business rather than a replacement. It stresses the importance of continuous inspection and quality maintenance to prevent business decline. The speaker shares business adages and personal strategies, such as including seemingly useless tasks to monitor employee engagement and using technology to empower individuals to manage larger workloads efficiently. The paragraph concludes with the idea that automation is about creating a culture of growth and providing a meaningful place for employees to build their careers.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Automation
💡Airbnb Business
💡Territory Managers
💡Housekeepers
💡Organizational Structure
💡Revenue Management
💡General Operations Management
💡Leadership Pipeline
💡Multipliers
💡Systems
💡Technology
Highlights
It's possible to fully automate an Airbnb business with over 100 properties.
The secret to automation is knowing what to automate, not just how to automate.
Automating a business increases its valuation by removing personal involvement from its operations.
The speaker's business is worth approximately 20 million, highlighting the success of automation.
Hiring specialized managers and a team of housekeepers is key to scaling the business.
Creating a clear organizational structure with roles such as territory managers and revenue managers is essential.
The importance of hiring housekeepers by the hour to reduce costs and increase loyalty.
Having a housekeeping manager is the first step towards pseudo-automation.
Building systems and hiring support staff prevents the main manager from burnout as the business grows.
Reading 'The Leadership Pipeline' and 'Multipliers' is recommended for managers to improve leadership and team productivity.
As the business grows, hiring additional managers to cover different shifts is necessary.
Revenue management, listing creation, and guest resolutions can be handled by specialized staff as the business scales.
The speaker offers coaching for high-earning Airbnb hosts, indicating a focus on advanced business growth.
Automation is about creating systems and people, not relying solely on technology.
Technology should support people in the business, not replace them.
The importance of continuous inspection and quality maintenance in automated systems.
Incorporating 'useless' high-touch tasks can serve as indicators of employee engagement and system integrity.
Building a culture and vision with momentum and growth keeps employees invested in the business.
The necessity of trust in delegation for successful automation, as demonstrated by the speaker's relationship with Haley.
Transcripts
support staff to make sure that that one
boss doesn't lose their mind along the
way
it is possible to completely 100
automate an airbnb business i've done it
with over 100 properties and i'll tell
you all about how i did it and i'll tell
you how you can too you know what the
secret is it's not just really knowing
how to automate stuff in this world you
just need to know what to automate and a
lot of it's simple there's just a few
things so in this video i'm going to
tell you what to automate and pro tips
on how to automate it so that way you
can be like me
out of work intentionally which is kind
of fun let's jump in yeah i'm back on my
bs coffee every day lots of coffee thank
you for coming back to watch this video
airbnb family now this video is
hopefully going to be a little bit more
high level i'm going to try to keep it
simple enough for you newbies out there
but
to automate a business is really the
goal of any business right because
if you want to sell a company you need
to remove yourself from the company
otherwise when you go and try to sell it
people be like well you're going to
leave after we buy it and then all of
what makes this company run is gone with
you so we're not going to buy your
company for anything but the asset value
right so to automate a company is to
give it a true valuation
and my business is worth ballpark about
like 20 something million if i wanted to
sell it right now um last time somebody
looked at it which is cool now i have a
little over 100 properties haley runs
the business now the way this works is
haley runs all territories we have
territory managers under haley we have
specialized managers that handle tasks
like setting up listings doing revenue
guest experience
selling landlords to get us new leases
we have specialized roles and then a
vast majority of our staff our biggest
staff are housekeepers we've got dozens
of housekeepers on our teams
and we have va's most of our va's are
local most of them if you took a sheet
of paper and you drew out what i just
told you you know haley at the top over
everything and then under haley we have
new lease sales we have housekeeping
management we have guest experience
management we have channels like airbnb
management we have revenue management
we're making sure we get good prices and
then we have general operations
management which would include
inventory control
replacing things maintenance
resolutions when guests owe us money
taking that and putting into arbitration
if airbnb airbnb doesn't pay us for
something you know stuff like that and
then you've got of course accounting
tracking the numbers the money stuff
like that um if you drew that all under
haley and then said okay well the
housekeeping manager needs to know some
stuff to manage housekeepers and under
the housekeeping manager are
housekeepers guest experience needs to
know some stuff there's going to be some
skills and then under them is staff that
runs guest experience you know you can
start to branch out an organizational
structure and for years i tried to find
a book on organizational structure and
how to decide what structured companies
should be there's really no magic bullet
business to business but in my seven
years of running an airbnb business i
can tell you exactly what roles need to
fill in where now i'm not going to give
you the five-day seminar version of that
because that's a really big topic and we
would have to cover i mean if i really
wanted to nerd out make this hard for
you to digest in one sitting i'd have to
teach you how to do interviews how to
assess fit for managers how to do
interviews for entry level staff how to
assess fit for like entry-level staff
how to get managers to manage
entry-level staff like all this stuff
there's a lot of little dynamics here
but
what is remarkably simple about this is
you can add one thing at a time right so
i don't want to scare you away from the
idea of automating as you grow your
business to five doors 10 doors 15 doors
things will get added as needed and you
will learn a skill set one skill set at
a time that's what i did
so
at about five doors or six doors you can
start hiring housekeepers to do more
bulk work and this allows you to pay
them by the hour this is one of the
first things that i think you should do
if you're automation-minded see
housekeeper loyalty is one of the most
important parts of automating your
business you need your own housekeepers
now if you pay housekeepers flat rate
they're going to be in a market that
talks that same lingo it's going to be
easier for people to pull them and
recruit them to clean their properties
or if you're paying people flat rate
it's usually because they have
experience in the industry and work for
other people or they have a cleaning
company
and
to automate a housekeeping team you want
your housekeeping team so removed from
the mainstream industry of housekeeping
and other people's properties that they
just stay with you so it's better to
hire people with no experience
eventually train them to do housekeeping
speak their like they have them have
them speak your language as a company
and then own that
relationship and pay them by the hour
paying them by the hour will lower your
housekeeping costs and give you more
money to afford to pay other people for
other stuff
all housekeepers should have a manager
and this is the first level of like
pseudo automation is if you have a
manager managing housekeepers and that
manager starts to communicate with
guests they start to do inventory
control buy more toilet paper when
you're running out of stuff you can like
80 percent 90 automate your business
with just the relationship of a boss and
housekeeping team right but that boss
will get burned out as you grow so now
the rest of your automation
journey is going to be to build systems
and to hire support staff to make sure
that that one boss doesn't lose their
mind along the way and hopefully as you
train and mentor that one boss they
become more capable of handling a more
complex business and so you should first
read the book the leadership pipeline
by ram sharon and then you should give
your first manager that same book
you also should read a book called
multipliers which is how to get like
better work out of people make them more
motivated make them more productive and
then you should give that book to your
first manager too now there's gonna be a
lot of other reading material that will
be great for you there's one called
critical business skills for success
it's by the great courses it's like a
30-something hour audio book it's very
wide in topic matter covers all aspects
of business but to automate a company
you really need to understand business
so one step at a time housekeepers and
then the manager as you pick up 20 25
properties that manager will need days
off that you can't give them because
obviously you're separating yourself
from the business too so you're not just
gonna cover for them two three nights a
week that person needs an assistant or
another manager to come in and work on
nights that they have off so now you'll
have two managers that work five days a
week just on different schedules and
they're managing the housekeepers doing
inventory control talking with guests
there might be a time that you have so
many properties that that manager can't
communicate with guests and housekeepers
at the same time right that could be a
level of growth that you reach now when
you hit that point then what you'll do
is you'll hire somebody to manage either
housekeeping or hire somebody to manage
customer interactions and that really
would be based on the strengths of your
current manager if your manager is
better with guest interactions or better
with housekeeping interactions let them
flow in that direction and start to hire
support to cover them where they're like
the worst at stuff
you're still probably doing your own
revenue management at this point by the
way you know you should be changing your
prices on airbnb and vrbo and i have
tons of videos on like pricing strategy
on this channel and you should watch
those
eventually as you get big enough you
might decide to give listing creation
and management
resolutions like asking guests for money
and sending arbitration claims airbnb
and revenue management you can give
those three topics to people in more
specialized ways
by the time you get to that point you
should be making a million dollars plus
per year in revenue
and your management team should be happy
they should be good at hiring people
your housekeeper retention should be
good you should have some systems
figured out either by learning them
yourself or through like some sort of
mentorship with me
i've got about a thousand students by
the way that i teach in this other
course and
you definitely don't need a course to be
successful on airbnb but they chose that
path so that is an option
if you are making a million dollars a
year on airbnb
you can fully automate that business and
still make a great amount of profit
and that's the kind of the important
part here and i think that should be
your your goal your threshold make a
million and then automate in that order
so if i can give you fortune cookie
advice to wrap that all up into one big
like and subscribe kind of bow it is
that businesses are automated by systems
and people
don't use technology to automate use
technology to support your people in
your the hopes of automating to lower
your costs on some stuff to do
repetitive tasks that one person could
do a hundred times over that's one of
the biggest myths in this industry is
that you can automate with technology
that's why you should never work with a
company like evolve evolve is trash
because they don't have local people to
manage your property they just do all
this technology based stuff and they
want like 10 of your business which is
not cool avoid companies like evolve if
you're trying to automate what you're
going to do is you're going to teach
people how to respond to customers and
think critically
how to like manage new situations humans
can manage new situations and in this
industry there's always a level of new
customers are different they're always
different
and then with them you can give them
best practices
systems to follow so most of everything
is like done in some super efficient way
and then all they have to do is work
their brain really hard every now and
then to handle a new like situation and
if that becomes frequent you can make a
system for that too right people
learning systems critical thinking
making new systems the company keeps
growing and adapting and getting better
and better and better and then
technology can make it easier for one
really good person to manage something
that's that's too big right so a
platform management software can allow
one person to like to message guests on
multiple platforms or a pricing
management software can allow one person
to like have an elegant pricing revenue
strategy where they can like play with a
thousand properties and revenue manage a
thousand properties through some form of
automated system where now they're only
making minor tweaks to the machine
technology can increase how powerful one
person in your company is at their task
but it can never replace a person
altogether no matter what employees and
technologies should always be supervised
by people one of the biggest adages i've
ever learned there's two
two quotes i've ever learned from
mentors professors in business and stuff
like that one is never run out of cash
follow that rule and you'll live forever
and then two continue to inspect what
you expect
and if you ever turn a blind eye to
something that gets repeated that should
maintain a level of level of quality
just know that it will break it will
break if you don't continue to inspect
a lot like a pro tip and i'm really
going to nerd on you on this a pro tip
is when i build systems for people to
follow i will pepper in completely
useless high-touch things that they need
to do like a certain form that they need
to complete or something like that
because what will happen is that form is
a form of communication like hey do this
every single day when you do the stats
do this one thing and it's highly
visible within the organization it's
almost like a like a bobber on the water
kind of thing and the moment that thing
disappears you know that something's
changed so the moment somebody doesn't
complete a form that they're supposed to
complete or some menial task it doesn't
damage the business you start to know
that that person is disengaging from
their work they're starting to let their
quality of work lax because they're not
doing something that's highly visible to
you don't ever let anybody know if
you're giving them something to do that
just lets you know that they're doing
something
because they will then gain you back and
just do that one thing so they don't get
caught but that's a pro tip for like
making sure that your people are engaged
and pro tip number two for that is
prevention is better than cure so not
only should you have these systems in
place to know how engaged your people
are and so that way your managers can
know that all the people are doing the
right thing but you need to find a way
to make people still love their job day
in day out month and month out so when
you build this company you're building a
culture you're building a vision it
needs to have momentum and growth if
you're not constantly adding new
properties or doing something
that changes the nature of the business
or challenges the business for all time
if the business ever becomes static and
you stop at say 50 doors and you don't
do anything with a business and you're
just like checked out the people in your
company will see it as a dead-end
business so a lot of automating is
finding a way for a company to grow and
challenge itself so the people in the
company stay invested forever because to
automate forever is to give someone
someone else a place that they can spend
their whole life building something that
they care about and that's the biggest
part of automation um i've tried my
damnedest with haley to give her a place
that she likes to work a place where she
has full autonomy and control she could
destroy the whole company if she wanted
to that's the level of trust that i've
given her she can absolutely just just
dunk the whole thing right now there's
nothing i could do about it
but that is the exchange that i've made
for the sake of automation so you're
gonna have to learn to trust people um
and it is a wild ride if you have
questions about automation um
some of them might be super high level
i'll try my best to answer them in the
comments um i will be doing
small group coaching for people who are
making more than a million dollars a
year on airbnb or vrbo as a combination
i don't do it yet but that's something
happening here in 2022
if you make more than a million per year
on airbnb and you want to have more
candid conversations about how to grow
your business um keep that in the back
of your brain because i will be
available more now for the big boys some
of my students are making three or four
million dollars a year and and the level
of like student mentorship that i do is
starting to be too low level for them
where i've got 30 or 40 people in one
zoom call and we're talking about how to
pitch landlords how to handle like your
finances in one area where to buy a
couch
these guys they're way beyond that and
so in order for me to mentor them we
have to have a completely separate
conversation like just almost in a way
one-on-one or a much smaller group only
for those big boys and so i finally hit
a spot where some of my like my closest
proteges are at that point and it will
turn into an invite for some of you
other big hitters to come in and have
that conversation too so thank you so
much for watching this video i hope it
wasn't too abstract and if any of you
want to add to this conversation in the
comments and have any anecdotes or
advice for automation would love to see
it thank you so much guys and i'll see
you on the other side
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