Are the unknowns of Airbnb investing keep you from getting started? Do you worry about choosing the wrong place in the wrong market and losing money instead of making money? Have you been looking for a resource to guide you through Airbnb investing the “right way” but don’t know where to begin?
If this sounds familiar you need to listen to Episode 9 of the Host Coach Airbnb Podcast where we unpack what an Airbnb coach does, how to evaluate a coach to make sure you end up with someone legit, and how we can help ensure your investing success.
After listening to this episode you will understand how Airbnb coaches can potentially help you at each of the 6 stages of investing. You will also have a list of free and inexpensive resources to educate yourself on Airbnb investing.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- What an Airbnb coach does
- The 6 investment inflection points where an Airbnb coach can help
- Our sniff test for vetting valid Airbnb coaches
- The best free and low-cost resources for Airbnb investing information & education
Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 9 Show Notes:
So why do people use coaches? Typically it's to shorten the learning curve to attaining a goal or to identify obstacles and develop strategies to overcome them, avoid costly mistakes and give peace of mind that they're doing things the right way.
And I can attest to this. We actually have a coach for creating the Host Coach Airbnb Podcast because we had no idea how to create a podcast, what equipment to use, or how to design episodes that were helpful for people. And so instead of reading 6 books and doing all sorts of things online, I found a coach, learned from him, and here we are!
Airbnb Investment Inflection Points
We've been coaching now for five years and there's six main areas where we come in and help investors. And I want to take a minute and go through some of those. The first being the pre-purchase stage. So if you're thinking about where to invest, what markets might appeal to you, how those markets might be performing in terms of occupancy and average daily rates, that's the first "finding your where" inflection point where we come in and help. So it's finding markets and then also property identification, which property within that market would do well on Airbnb. And we also can help run some analysis of potential estimated revenues for individual properties.
An Airbnb coach can give you piece of mind. You're like, Oh, I like this house. I like this market, but how do I know it's going to make money? And so having a coach that can run some analyses for you and say, yes, this is exactly how much it's going to make. And then give you a few more tips and tools to actually increase that from where the baseline is very helpful.
Another thing that Airbnb coaches can do is give you design suggestions to make the exterior and interior of your listing pop. So again, it plays really well on the Airbnb platform. And adding those micro amenities along the way. And also, we have sometimes been like the tiebreaker. If there's a husband wife team or just two partners and one wants to do everything and one wants to do nothing, we tend to mediate some of that decision making on design and renovation. So you get started and don't get stuck!
And then comes my favorite part, the "go live" on Airbnb. When you're creating a listing on Airbnb, there are 101 little decisions to be made, little check marks, little policies. And about a dozen of those are vitally important and some are counterintuitive. So going through and setting up the listing, answering all those questions with someone who's done it a hundred times is extremely valuable.
And one of those toggles that is not intuitive is very new. Airbnb has put it where it auto toggles to: I want guests who have good reviews, a good track record. And you would think, yeah, that's exactly what I want. But as Culin had said in a previous episode, that actually keeps you from hosting anyone who's never stayed in an Airbnb. And people who've stayed in Airbnbs and their hosts just haven't reviewed them. And so the population who even get to see your listing is diminished and you don't succeed the way that you think you would right out of the gate.
So once we get that listing set up with all the right settings and policies put in place, we will then attach the automation softwares. We've talked about Hospitable, we've talked about Price Labs in previous podcast episodes, and again, for everybody that's ever set up a new software it helps to have done it a few times.
And for our new listeners, what do Price Labs and Hospitable do?So Price Labs is your automated pricing tool. It connects to your Airbnb account and it understands what the demand is like for any given day, and based on a base price that we would set together, it adjusts your daily prices up or down based on market demands. So it's a dynamic pricing tool.
We just talked about Hospitable last week, which is your automated messaging tool to automate 90% of your guest communications. So you don't have to. And it also improves your guest experience, triple win! So with those softwares set up, the listing is often ready to go.
Fun fact: Something that a lot of people don't know is that Airbnb for the first 30 days that your listing is live gives you a boost. It's like a tryout period. The platform shows your listing very high in search results to give you an opportunity to compete with listings.
So if you're concerned if it's a new listing, I don't have any reviews. Is anybody going to see my listing? Am I going to get bookings because it's new? I see all these super hosts out there and they've got all these reviews. Airbnb overcomes that for you by giving you this boost period of 30 days.
During which we want to track how the listing is performing in terms of its search rank placement, right? So when you go to Airbnb and you type in your city, Airbnb has to decide which order in to show specific listings. So that boost puts you towards the top of that page for the first 30 days or so.
That brings the next point that we, as coaches, want to monitor that rank placement. So we use a software called Rank Breeze and we will monitor the listing and how it's performing in terms of search results. This matters because if you don't know where your listing is showing up and what guests are seeing, then you don't know if you're not booking because you're not showing or you're not booking for other reasons. So, it's one of these wonderful analysis tools that instead of just wondering gives you very accurate daily information.
And that's the next inflection point where someone's bookings might be falling off and we'll come in and take a look at why those bookings might be falling off. And that could be re-addressing and re-optimizing policies that have changed within the Airbnb listing. Making sure that those are all set up properly and making sure that we are ranking where we're supposed to be ranking and making adjustments. So we call that a re-optimization.
Finally, where we often come in as coaches is for scaling Airbnb investment portfolios. It's very common that about a year or so after after getting someone set up the next phone call is: we're looking to grow the portfolio and how do we evaluate markets again? And, what are the challenges in scaling from one Airbnb to two or 75 like Tony did in Episode 7?
To recap, the main inflection points where it's really helpful to have an Airbnb coach is pre-purchase when you're trying to find a market in property. Design, when you're renovating or just decorating your new listing. The listing creation and understanding all the different toggles that are important to toggle on the platform, automating softwares that are dynamic pricing and messaging. Listing rank, placement, tracking and optimization. Re-optimization if you've had your listing for a while and all of a sudden it's just not performing the way it used to. And finally, how to scale from one to two, how to build teams, and what's different. So you don't run into roadblocks and hurdles. You just scale beautifully.
How to Find an Airbnb Coach
So we've talked about Airbnb investing and Airbnb coaches. How do you go about finding an Airbnb coach? What do you use to evaluate? So I have an Airbnb sniff test. It's a coach sniff test in general, but specifically for Airbnb. If you're looking for a coach, does the person you're evaluating own and operate successful Airbnbs or are they just telling you things that they think will work out of conjecture, out of speculation or articles they read on Reddit?
Are they a Superhost? Have they coached other investors? And it's okay if they haven't, if you're their first person and they're open about it. But, I'm always skeptical of the person who's coached 7, 000 Airbnb coaches and they don't have a property and they're not a Superhost. It just doesn't quite hang together.
And another thing to look at are professional achievements. Does this coach speak? Do they have a masterclass? Do they have a book? Do they have a podcast? What are they putting out into the ecosystem to help other people, not just take money out of people's pockets? And finally, do you like the person? Do you gel? Do your personalities work together? Do they inspire you? Do they also seem like they have a system that will hold you accountable? Can you see this person really helping you succeed towards your goal faster?
We ended up coaching very organically. In 2018 when we scaled to three properties, it was really friends and family that came and noticed what we were doing. I didn't really set out to coach anybody, but our friends and family really saw what we were accomplishing. And it just became a joy to help my family members and friends get into Airbnb investing and start generating cash flow that could change their lives.
And these are really different personalities and different like socioeconomic status. It was everybody from social workers to sisters to business partners. And so seeing all of these different people, all fascinated with the cashflow and financial freedom coming out of our Airbnb investments was one of those Whoa, we're onto something here.
What was really exciting for me was seeing if we could replicate the strategies and systems in different markets. Did we pick a market that we just got lucky in? Then I was invited to speak to a Keller Williams market center Wilmington, North Carolina, and met a lot of great folks there.
That presentation actually became the outline of my secret sauce. I had never really formalized the processes in a written format until we had to put that into a presentation for that market center. That presentation became the outline for the Host Coach book.
It was such a joy to go into totally different markets, teach people I didn't know or wasn't related to and see that they were able to replicate the success. This led to speaking at additional market centers, a couple of trips to KW Family Reunion.
So here we are nine episodes into the host coach podcast. We coach, speak, write, and podcast because we love to help people like you find financial freedom through Airbnb investing. It changed our lives and we want to help change yours.
Our joy is in your success. It's that simple. So many people ask us, why do you do this? Why do you have a podcast? Why are you spending time doing free 30 minute airbnb coaching consultations for people? It's because the power to change someone's life for the better is magical and we're so blessed and being able to bless others. It's just, you can't out give God. So the more you bless others, the more it comes back. And it's been a really cool. couple of years.
If you're looking for more information and education on all things, Airbnb-related you don't necessarily have to have an Airbnb coach. You can check out our Airbnb investing blog on hostcoach.co. I'm forever adding new posts as we talk to clients and they have a question. That's a blog post. As we run into new and interesting things on the Airbnb platform, or we run into interesting things with guests or our own listings, things we're adding, things we're taking out - those all become posts because.
The more you read, the more, the more you anticipate and learn about an industry, the easier it's going to be to make decisions and do things well on your own. The other thing you can do, it will cost you all of 99 cents is download the Kindle version of our book host coach. You can also listen to it on audible, or if you're like me, you need the paperback and you've got to highlight everything and dog ear the pages and show your husband.
But if you've got a specific question or problem that we can help you with. Please take a minute on the website. You can sign up for a 30 minute consultation, zoom with us. We'd be happy to answer any questions or challenges that you're experiencing at this point.
Or if you're the kind of person who really wants step by step assistance and mentorship through your Airbnb investing journey, we do also have an affordable Airbnb coaching package on our website.
So now you know how Airbnb coaches help at each stage of investing, have a list of resources to educate yourself, understand how to vet a potential coach and know specifically how Culin and I can help you succeed as an Airbnb investor!
