Short Term Rental University how you doing it's
Richard founder of short-term rental university and i'm coming to you live
from houston texas and you may ask what we're doing here if you don't know now's
the time to figure it out we've been on a tour of meetups we took
a poll we asked people that were part of our community who wanted to come and
meet us and talk to us and other hosts and learn a little bit more about the
business and in the response was fabulous
so fabulous in the fact that we decided not to do it in just one city but we
took the top four cities actually five vegas dropped out not enough people
registered at the last minute but we went from New York where we met six or
so people which was great my backyard then we went to Los Angeles we flew out
there we stated in the Airbnb which was really cool this little bungalow and
Venice what a great community and what a great place like I'd like to stay there
every single time and we met I don't know seven people eight people something
like that more than that okay some really great hosts some really great
entrepreneurs some people that are growing their business and then today we
flew to Houston and here we are we're checked into this Airbnb tonight we've
got our single largest meetup I think there's gonna be about twelve or
fourteen people and that's largely because some of our community our team
reached out to their friends loved ones other hosts and invited them to come so
I don't think they're familiar with our YouTube channel I don't think they're on
our Facebook group yet but my guess is after tonight they will be and we really
appreciate that right like the more the merrier we can learn from one another so
if you guys aren't inviting friends and family and loved ones and you know your
neighbor that also hosts who are community please do so we'd really
appreciate it and then tomorrow we fly to Chicago we have a meet-up there I
think there's about seven or eight people registered for that and can't
wait we're also gonna see one of our community members places he's doing a
renovation we're gonna film that that's gonna come to the channel so we're gonna
talk about like renovation and opportunity and sort of like ideas about
renovation I'm really excited about that a little secret that I can't quite tell
you too much about but when we were in Los Angeles I had a really cool meeting
I don't want to jinx it but like if that comes to fruition
is gonna be super cool super helpful super exciting it's gonna really help
grow our community and fingers crossed so been a crazy week we've been running
around like mad we're putting all sorts of effort and energy into the membership
and the content and what we're doing and lining up experts and I can't wait to
launch that on December first but even though we're running around two things
we are committed to making you guys videos so we wanted to give you this
update tell you what's going on and - we listen to you we've asked you to vote on
other things and we've paid close attention so it was very apparent when
asked about a podcast that many short-term rental university people like
podcasts they like it when they drive they like it when they work out they
like it when they clean and so we launched a podcast today officially we
launched our podcast it's on iTunes and Charles has also launched a separate
YouTube channel so that we don't put you know all the videos with the podcasts on
this same channel you're gonna have to go to the STR u podcast channel and I'm
pleased to announce it's live today we've got two listing two podcast live
the very first one is from one of our community members Zac he posted on
Facebook that you know he made $21,000 in his shared place over the course of
this year and now he has a second place and that was really really a ton of
engagement around that there was something like 70 comments on our
Facebook group which reminds me if you're not on our private Facebook group
please come and join us there there's so much great interesting content like this
that when I flew to LA and saw the amount of engagement I knew was gonna
meet him at the meetup I invited him to be our first podcast guest and he was
really thrilled it was super cool we had a great time we had a great time
chatting you can watch that now if you want to see the video on the YouTube
channel if you want to just listen to it you can do it on the YouTube channel or
on iTunes everything is linked below but what was really cool and you know really
touched me was that Zach was so thoughtful when he brought me a book as
a gift I got I got you a little a little gift you're kidding me
it's called rhinoceros success oh I love it thank you so much so Zach thank you
so very much and I encourage you to watch the video and/or listen to the
podcast and get to know one another better which is sort of the whole point
of the meetup that's over here what else Charles I had some
Oh the tip the tip so from all the meetups that we had there seemed to be a
common theme that I emerged with and Charles and I spoke about it and I think
it would be helpful to just like talk about it because a lot of people aren't
in the meetups they're not able to come and so like one common theme keeps
coming up is that the early stage host the early stage entrepreneur the
solopreneur isn't valuing his or her time properly right like there's this
concept of well I don't want to charge for it I'm doing it myself and that
doing it myself could be the cleaning it could be running to Target and Home
Depot and this and that in the other and you know when I was a first-time
entrepreneur it's very common so I'll just do it I don't want to pay somebody
to do it well in the end that's actually really detrimental to your business into
your success and the reason is because you can only do so much and then you're
also very likely to burn out like it gets exhausting cleaning after every
turnover and you'll start to find that instead of wanting more business and one
nights days and more turnover you actually start to dread it and that's
really bad and you'll burn out and so you should think about what price your
time is worth and it should be at least what you would pay somebody else to do
the job so if you pay somebody to clean $15 an hour or $20 an hour then your
time should be valued at $20 an hour and if you clean the place yourself because
you enjoy doing it god bless you that's fine but make sure you charge a cleaning
fee and don't think that just like running to Target and going over here
there's gas there's parking there's wear and tear there's your time
there's the liability somebody could crash into you so you're not doing
anybody a favor by like carrying your time at zero in fact you're doing
yourself a disservice so start to think of your time as having value and once
you start doing that in charging people then you'll start to free up yourself to
think about more strategic initiatives and how you can improve yourself how you
can improve your business how you can reduce costs but if you're just go go go
go go that's not sustainable and it's actually a bad way to think about it so
I think that's a recurring theme and we're gonna drill down a lot more on
that because I know how challenging it is I was there when I started my
business and one of the things that I'm really proud of is now I try and do as
little as possible right like my job is to be creative and use my mind and
outsource just about everything else and I'd encourage you to do the same thing
so I think that's it Charles anything else go to the podcast subscribe to that
channel check us out on iTunes review us give us good feedback we want you know
this to grow as well super excited can't wait to meet you all really appreciate
it I'm very much looking forward to Thanksgiving and then coming back and
launching the membership and I'm just so particularly grateful for all of your
support and encouragement and for people traveling and coming great distances to
see me it's very humbling and I really really appreciate it
and with that said please go ahead and like the video subscribe to the YouTube
channel join us on the Facebook group listen to our podcast and if you haven't
subscribed to the YouTube channel