From Side Gig to 8-Figure Airbnb Business… and Private Equity Is Calling

We switch gears.

I'm gonna throw a random question at you guys.

Been a lot of changes in the industry.

What do you think the biggest lesson you've learned in, say, the last twelve months is?

Yeah, it's a great question, Mike.

I would say for me, it's just structuring your company for an exit, even if you don't plan on exiting or maybe you do, but it's just like, that'll allow you to get out of your business, right? And start enjoying your life.

I know when me and Matt were working our W-2s, we were like, "Hey, we wanna start a business and have more freedom and more options in life." And like I mentioned earlier on the podcast, it's like we jumped in, we found ourselves answering guest messages at midnight, right? Running around crazy.

So being able to structure a team and put in systems and processes, I think that's big ep- been a big epiphany, and especially with a lot of, like, buyers, right? I mean, me and Matt have done a couple acquisitions, and a company is way more attractive when you can purchase a company and they have a whole entire team in place.

They have a great maintenance person in place.

They have a clean P&L.

I mean, it's just so much easier to pick up and buy that business, right? So I think that's been a big epiphany, is like structure your business where you're not the hero, right? You're not saving all the mistakes and, and making everything work.

So I think just hiring a great team and have good systems and processes in place are so important, depending on if you wanna just keep your business for thirty years, if you wanna scale it quickly, or you wanna exit.

That's one common theme I've seen from people that have five properties to companies like we saw at Verma that have five hundred, six hundred properties.

It's like the same theme is, get a great team in place, and don't be the one solving all the issues.

Mine, mine's along those lines as well, but it's...

I, I think St-Steve Schwab, uh, from Casago talked about it, is that your business will only grow to the ability that you have as a leader of that business.

And I think that that's been the biggest epiphany as we continue to hire more, is that, like Craig said, we need to, we need to get really good at completing all the work of the business through other people.

And that means we have to get really good as managers and really good as leaders.

And Craig and I have different strengths- In those realms, you know, whether a manager is a different role than a leader, and you kinda have to be both.

So I think we really worked on trying to improve our own skills in those areas.

How do you be a good leader? How do you set a vision? What is the vision, right? And, and what are the, what are the core values that we have as a, as an organization? Let's write them down, and let's talk about them instead of just hoping that everyone understands them or assumes that they understand them.

How do we set the culture? How do we, with all the headaches that come along day to day with running a business and, and, um, how do you keep everyone motivated and excited to be here? That's where the vision comes in.

And then when you're selecting people to join the team, what are the things you're really looking for? And Craig and I talked about it after the conference, the positive mindset.

Coming in with a positive mindset and a good attitude is the first and most important thing that we have to look for in every new employee.

Everything else is secondary to that attitude, especially in the hospitality industry.