Running your Airbnb Business on “Autopilot” (Tools for Automation)

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What's up, guys? It's James here and welcome to today's video where we're going to talk about automation. This is a really fun topic to talk about because a lot of people want to know how to automate and outsource a lot of the day to day operations their business, because obviously doing so gives you a whole bunch more freedom gives you a whole bunch more time.

And why is anyone running their own business, if not for some additional freedom? You know, probably the number one reason that people will want to get into entrepreneurship, want to get into managing properties on Airbnb running their own business doing so is that they want more freedom. And so understandably, people want to know the strategies for how to do so how to make sure that you're not actually involved in the day to day operations of the business.

So if you're interested in learning about that, then stick around. That's exactly what we're going to be talking about in this video. Now, if you liked this video, and you want to learn more, you want to get more in depth about the exact strategy that we use the exact systems that we have the tools that we use for automation, all that stuff, then again, just check out our free training data.

Down below, you'll be able to access all that and more, I'm going to go behind the scenes on my listings, I'm going to show you the exact systems we use in our business, I'm going to show you step by step how I built the company, how I built the business, going from, you know, the first very, very first property right up to over 30 listings under management and how to actually put the systems in place to be able to grow and do that.

You know, like the same speed that I did or some of my clients are doing it, you know, having that kind of growth in a year means that you need to have the right system so if you want all of that, again, just check out the free training down below. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up. And if you're new to the channel here then please just consider subscribing.

I release two new videos every single week on Tuesdays and on Thursdays just keeping everyone training update about all the best practices for how to improve your performance on Airbnb make Airbnb hosting easier and how to grow and like we're talking about in this video, automate and outsource your Airbnb management business if you choose to manage properties for other people the way that I have so Without any further ado, let's jump right into it.

Let's talk about there's basically going to be three main areas of your business that you need to, they need to automate or outsource, I always break things down into three, I like to break things down into a manageable amount of things. So we can really put systems in place and break it down for you nice and simply.

And the really cool thing here is that there really are only just three areas of your business, that you really need to focus on automating or outsourcing to get yourself removed from the day to day operations of the business. And so those three areas are number one going to be cleaning up to make sure that you're not involved in any of the turnovers and listings in between guests.

Number two is going to be your guest communication. So that's going to make sure that you are not the one that's actually messaging your guests answering their questions, you know, dealing with their concerns, all that sort of stuff, saying them checking information, all that fun stuff.

And then the third thing is going to be managing maintenance at the properties. So obviously, if you are managing properties, typically you're going to offer maintenance, sometimes you're going to be managing properties remotely and you're Just gonna be dealing with the back end of things we talked about that in the training as well, on the free train down below, there's a couple different ways to do it.

But if you are managing maintenance and taking care of that for your property owners and charging additional fee for that, you are obviously going to have to have just a system in place to be able to actually do that, you know, manage that without you being the one actually going by and unclogging the drain or whatever it might be.

And so let's just kind of walk through them one step at a time. The first one that you're going to want to automate in your business is going to be cleaning this should be relatively obvious to most people is that you want to get out of the cleaning as soon as possible. Ideally, you never even want to touch it in the first place.

Some people I recommend honestly, doing a couple of turnovers like I'm talking one or two, just so you get a feel, I think it's a good idea to in any business that you run, get a feel for each individual part of the business so you have a hands on understanding of exactly what that process is, as opposed to you know, never having touched it before at all, which I find that can just kind of leave you a little bit detach from it and laugh You can lack the understanding

If it's only conceptual, and you never actually put it into practice, but nevertheless, you want to get out of cleaning as quickly as possible. And so in order to do this pretty simple, really, you just have to have a cleaning team more in more, you know, sort of complicated than that is that you need to have the right cleaning team.

And what I mean by this is you need to have a clean team that's gonna be able to actually work with you within all the parameters that you have for your your properties, because your properties on short term rental are going to have quite different needs than obviously properties that are on long term rental or properties that they're just cleaning on a weekly or monthly basis for a normal property owner normal homeowner actually lives in the home.

But you if you're managing five, or 10 or 15, or 30 properties are going to have slightly different needs as well, compared to a single unit Airbnb owner, you're going to want a cleaner that's going to be able to work with you and manage all of your laundry.

They're going to be able to manage, you know their own scheduling, you're going to want to be able to give them access to To your to the back end. Typically, you'll want to have some software setup for this so that they can have their scheduling all taken care of for them, they can do that you never have to call your cleaner, you never have to email them, text them, tell them you have to clean, they just get up and they go and they do it.

So again, if you want the links to and sort of the the overview of all the different tools that we use for this, all the different systems we use for this, again, that's going to be gone into in detail in the free training below. So just check that out if you want more detail.

But that's step number one is finding the right clean team who has all the right systems, and then just having the right tools and systems to be able to train them, set them up gives them all give them all the checklists and tools and systems that they need to be able to clean the properties consistently add exactly the standard that you expect for your properties that your guests are expecting and that your property owners expect out of your cleaners.

Yeah, all those systems, checklists, tools, everything is linked in the training the free training down below. So then the next step after your cleaners is going to be your guest communication Now this is a really cool one guess communication is typically not really going to be something that you care too much about outsourcing or automating until you've got over five properties.

Up until that point, some people are going to choose to do it right from the get go and get that off their plate as well. But for the most part, you're only messaging a couple of messages a day up until you're managing over five properties. So it's really not too much work to begin with. Once you do get to the stage where you want to automate that and you want to get it completely off of your plate, then there's a number of different things that you can do.

The first thing that you want to do is use automation software, there are software's that you can use to send some of those more templated messages to your guests automatically. For example, sending them a check in instructions message, you know, slightly before their check in time, sending them a checkout reminder that gives them all the steps that they need to do to check out for the property, where to leave the keys, all that sort of stuff slightly before their checkout time.

Those sorts of messages can largely just be automated by different tools and software's that you can use. Just automate that guy Communication. So again, details for all that is in the free training down below. But that's the first step for automating and outsourcing your guest communication is going to be to automate. Because whatever you can do with a machine, it's gonna be a lot more reliable than doing with a human.

So you want to start there, the second thing you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to outsource the rest of it, because there are going to be some messages that you're not going to be able to have an automated response for, understandably, because people are going to ask very unique and specific questions sometimes. And so to do this, you want to use virtual assistants. And you can basically train them and give them the whole set of, you know, operating procedures for making sure that they have the right tonality making sure they know exactly what to say when to say it.

And then you also just want to have an organization of the specific details of your properties, for example, where the thermostat is located in property number one, where the thermostat is located and property number two, you know, all these different details about the properties, what the Wi Fi passwords are all that sort of stuff, and so having access to it team of virtual assistants who can then go and do that, and having all the right tools and systems for them so they know exactly how to communicate what kind of tonality to use how to answer different questions, that's going to be your key to unlocking complete automation, outsourcing around guests communication.

And again, like I mentioned, if you want all the details on that, not going to go into everything in this video. So if you want like all the step by step slps, the messaging templates, the software's we use, all that's included and talked about in the free training down below.

Now, the last thing you wanted the wanna take care of, is going to be your, what we call your gopher. This is the person is going to go for this go for that they're gonna take care of anything maintenance at properties, they're gonna just take care of any of the miscellaneous to do list items that come up at any of your properties.

Now the gophers someone that you're really going to only need once you get to about five to 10 properties that's where then you're going to want to look for a gopher because up until then it's not going to be you going by and actually unclogging the toilet. It would just be you having the the interaction With a guest that they'd say, hey, the toilets clogged, you would call a plumber, have them go over there and unclog the toilet.

Once that gets to a reasonable volume, and you want to get that completely off your plate, that's when you'd have a gofer put in place to just kind of triage all the different issues that come up. Ideally, they'd be someone with a bit of a handyman background where they go and take care of any minor issues that come up with the properties themselves.

And then that's going to basically be your solution to that. Again, you just want to have them have sort of a Rolodex of people in your area who are good for different trades, different reasons that a person might have to go and do maintenance of the property.

And they're going to take care of any of the other stuff like that. Now, it's important to remember as well, that the majority of all the tasks that you're going to need to go for for can really just be eliminated right from the beginning.

So I see a lot of people using their gopher to go and drop off extra towels for their desks or things of that nature. Now, if you hadn't have just the forethought to drop off enough towels have your cleaner rather drop off enough towels at the property to begin with for the number of guests that we're going to be checking in there.

You won't run into that issue in the first place. And so what I've found is that a lot of the reasons that people are going and running around taking care of their properties and they're constantly, you know, going all over the place, or have their gopher going all over the place, are really just mistakes in planning.

And they're just due to not having the right systems and the right processes to have everything be really streamlined and efficient. But really, once you have all those systems in place, your gopher is only going to do a couple of little tasks here and there.

And typically, they're going to be the type of person that is going to really appreciate if you get a local handyman to take on this role. They will appreciate having the consistent flow of work that just either dealing with one person for flow of work from all kinds of different properties, it just reduced the headache for them.

And so once you get those three areas of the business, outsource and automated now suddenly you're not taking care of the cleaning. You're not taking care of any of the guests communication. You're not taking care of any of the maintenance or any of that to do with a company the properties.

So what are you to do? Well, this is where your business enters the stage of being considered what I would call Passive or semi passive? Now, I'll be quite frank with you. And I'll tell you that I don't believe in a fully passive business in any industry, there's no matter what you have put in work to some degree to actually generate that income.

And so I'll tell you what I mean by this. I recently wrote the book Airbnb for dummies, and a lot of people would call that royalty that I get from the book as passive income. Now, the reality is, it's really just active income that's coming to me after I did the work.

So I did the initial work of actually writing the book with Wiley publishing, you know, getting it all put together, you know, and I did the work even before that and becoming a world leading expert in Airbnb, you know, running the bit like, all of that stuff was work that I put into this, and then I'm gonna get paid for years to come on in royalties, you know, coming in each month, whatever it might be.

Now, technically, that is passive income as some people would define it because I'm not actively working on the book at all month to month right now, however, that being said, I did put In a whole bunch of work earlier on, so I see it more as just delayed income. The reality is, there's nothing that you can ever just stop, never put any work into. And suddenly, you're gonna have money flowing into your bank account.

However, you can put systems in place, you can put the right the right tools in place the right strategies, the right systems in place, so that you're not actively involved in the day to day operations of a business, you have to put in work to get the system set up, you have to put in work to build the business in the first place.

Once you have that business built, once you have those systems in place, though, you can largely just remove yourself from the day to day operations of the business and have it run relatively passively, you're still gonna have to check in on it, you're still gonna have to get updates.

You know, even with a book, I still have to check in with the publishing company and see how our book sales are going, I have to manage my financials on the back end. And similarly with your Airbnb management business, you're still gonna have to check up with your property owners, you're still gonna have to make sure that they're happy.

You know, this is gonna be just one email a month, really, but still, that is something you're gonna have to check in your financials, your budget. Make sure everything is healthy, make sure everything's operating as it should be, again, that's only a one once a month type thing, but it is still effort that you're putting into it.

And then beyond that, really it just becomes Okay, well, do I want to just build the business to get to the level of income that I want? Well, that's $5,000, a month, $10,000 a month, whatever that might be for you specifically. And then just let the business now run semi passively just put in a couple hours of work a week or a couple hours of work a month into maintaining it at its current level?

Or do I want to just double down Do I want to start putting all this extra time that I've gotten out into growing the business and further developing and are finding those systems so that things run even more smoothly, so that I can scale it up even further and I can increase my income even more.

And that's I think what a lot of my clients end up doing is that they have this idea that hey, I just want to get to $5,000 a month passive income as I'm sure a lot of people watching this video do as well. But the reality is, once you get to that point, you typically want to keep growing as human beings.

We want to keep growing. We will Want to keep achieving more we want to keep on providing more for our family, we want even more freedom we want, you know, more of the luxuries that we can get out of life that are going to just make everything a lot more fun, quite frankly.

And so once you get to that stage, you a lot of times you will go on cruise control for a little bit, they'll have some fun, they'll take a bit of a time off, take a breather, I recommend not I think it's important to take your breaks and and make sure that you're managing everything properly. But then after that, the really nice thing is that once you have those systems set up, and you're no longer involved in the day to day operations, now you can really focus on taking a bird's eye view on and going okay, what else do I want to expand into now?

Do I want to keep growing this business? Do I want to expand to something else do I want to offer a different service to the same clients that I've already got? There's the beautiful thing you've got a number of clients 10 2030 clients that are paying you every single month. Suddenly, if you can figure out a way to add more value to those same clients, then you've already got people that are paying you have them pay you a bit more add more value.

To them, help them stick around for even longer. There's all kinds of different directions you can take it. That's where I think life gets really fun. That's where I think business gets really, really fun is once you reach that point where now you've got the freedom to do what you want, that supports your own specific goals for you as an individual.

So if you want to help if you want some help getting to that space, if you want help building that place without a whole bunch of the trial and error, you don't want to go through all the mistakes, you don't want to you know fumble your way through everything and risk giving up before you even get there. Just because you have the wrong systems you weren't quite sure what you were doing with all that stuff, then I urge you to check out the free training below.

I walk through step by step if nothing else, what you'll take away from the training is you'll be able to see exactly the steps that I went through exactly what the the journey looked like for me from getting from absolute zero to over 30 properties under management building that business, you'll be able to learn from some of the mistakes that I made along my journey because I talk very openly about those as well and if nothing else, You'll be able to just take away some of those things.

But I know that you'll also get value from checking out all the systems that we have all the tools, all the templates, all the systems that we built through trial and error that now you can leverage by just going in picking them up grabbing them, and implementing them in your own business and using them to help you grow your business to where you want to go to.

So I hope this video has been really, really valuable. I hope you've gotten a lot from it. I hope it's left you more well equipped to go out and actually grow your business to where you want to grow it to help support your personal goals with your business. If you have enjoyed the video, then I urge you to check it out. Again, that free training below I think you'll find it really really really valuable.

And if you liked this video, then please just drop a thumbs up on it, give it a like, it really helps to get me feedback. It helps me to know what's going on with people what people like what people don't like, where they get value where they don't. It also helps it a lot with the YouTube algorithm. So if you can take the time to just give it a like I'd really appreciate that.

If you are new here and you want to be updated you want to keep in touch and you want to see the new video videos that we post on this channel relating to everything as far as how to improve your hosting a how to make sure that your listing is performing as well as possible that hosting is is easy and enjoyable as possible. As well as like we talked about in this video how to grow an Airbnb business and how to actually make a full time income managing other people's properties on Airbnb.

You want to learn about all that I post new videos twice every single week. So consider just subscribing to the channel. If you hit the subscribe down the subscribe button down below in the bottom right hand corner, then you're going to be able to get all these different videos that we publish publish to every single week and really learn everything that we have to offer from those.

So again, if you're new to the channel, subscribe, if you liked the video, give it a thumbs up if you want more of this if you want to go in depth on all of it and check out the link below to the free training. Check that out I recommend it it's really awesome. We go into all the details until the next video. I hope that this has been really really valuable. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day and I will see you in the next video.