AVOIDING BURNOUT WITH GUEST COMMUNICATION
It's been a year hasn't it? We made it this far for better or for worse and I know some of you hosts out there just want to absolutely murder your guests right now! In this section, I want to I want to help. I’m going to try to guide you back to where you first were when you started in this industry. There's some huge benefits ofdoing what I’m about to give you as advice. It's actually going to make you more money. Even if you don'twant to hear anything else but how to make more money on Airbnb, this will affect your bottom line.
In this section, let's talk about burnout. Let's talk about guests, let's talk about coronavirus and how we can repair and heal moving forward. When I started at the end of 2014, I only had a few units I had my other my newspaper business just focused on that. I didn't really think that Airbnb was going to be big, so I didn't reallyput a lot of worry or focus on it I just kind of let it do its thing. Then 2017 came and then next thing you know I’ve got 10 properties, then 20, 25, 50, and I’m growing this business. At one point I did so much of it by myself because that's how I always like to do things that I took on too much more than I could chew. I had too many guests to communicate with, too many housekeepers to communicate with, too many repair things problems. Back then, we didn't have the huge issue with bad guests and refunds. It's actually gotten worselately, but I still hit a wall back then I had a wall where I started to burn out. The side effect of me burning outwas essentially at about 1am in the morning or 1:30 in the morning when I get a phone call from someonewho couldn't get in or lost their key, I stopped answering those phone calls. I didn't want to pick up my phone after one because I wanted to sleep a little bit and I just didn't want to deal with stupid guests after midnight.
I know a lot of you hosts are with me on this but the problem. with this You cannot punish that one guestespecially if the reason why you're this way is because of the thousands of guests before this one. You had tons of bad guests: guests that don't read their check-in instructions, guests that don't follow the rules, guests who smoke when they're not supposed to, guests why bring in a pet they didn't tell you about. It gets bad, but you're punishing the next guest for the last guest's transgressions. It's really hard, but it's something you have to do as a business. You have to hit the reset button. This is so important because every guest hasjust a generic expectation of how their Airbnb like trip is going to go. If you hit them with a curveball because you're short on patience that day, and you run your business emotionally it's going to affect your reviews. It'sgoing to affect the way that that guest treats your space. It's going to affect the whole experience between you and that guest. The more bad reviews you get from the way you treat these guests, the lower rankingwhich in turn means you'll get worse guess in the future. It's a downward spiral that you want to save yourself from.
Try to step back just take a look at your business and why you get started. You probably did it because it was an easy way to get more cash flow. Some of you own your properties, some arbitrage like me. I did it becausethe super bowl gave me a huge opportunity, but I saw consistent profitability. Very much less risk than running a normal business where I’ve got sales staff that may or may not perform. For these Airbnb listings,people just show up. They book and they show up. This is much easier and much lower risk to me. Rental arbitrage is low risk to me compared to my newspaper industry, and that's why I got into it.
Some of you might like the autonomy. The fact that you can sleep into whatever you feel like and you can have as many properties as you want. You don't have to go too big or you can you don't have to only have one. You can do what you want you can grow to the size that you like.It will fit you and these are the thingsthat we need to be grateful for. If you can maintain a sense of gratitude for your opportunity for the fact that it's giving you so much already. Then you can take some of that overflowing gratitude and just throw it at the guest that's giving you a hard time and just act in love. Recognize that there might be a reason why you're upset or being weird or maybe you're just a guest who gets weird on trips all the time. We see those guestson occasion. Some people are so neurotic that they cannot go on a trip without their anxiety spiking up and itaffecting the way that they behave on a trip. It just happens, and you have to forgive people for that so you can move forward and run your business. If you don't you're going to let those people build up and it's going to become a stressor. Then you're going to punish the next guest.
There is something called a strategic stop it's in the book I used to recommend this book all the time. It'scritical business skills for success. The by the great courses and it's at the end of this 32 34-hour audio book.They recommend a strategic stop. This is a 15-minute business-oriented meditation session where you start with mindfulness emptying your brain. You chill out, just trying to go to baseline and then slowly reintroducingwhat you need to in the day: tasks at hand what you have to get done. Things you have to make decisions onall that good stuff. If you can use the strategic stop to help reset and create mindfulness over the fact that you're dealing with customers all the time you can use this as a way to level up your customer service. If you cannot for any reason go without punishing your guests for being stupid (yes, I’m saying that guests can be stupid and they will be stupid), you're going to be hosting anybody and everybody. There's a wide range of people who show up in your home and if you cannot shut up when a guest is being dumb or doesn't read your house rules, if you cannot treat that guest well in spite of their faults, you need to hire someone who can.
At this point, we hired customer service staff because it prevents burnout for our managers. Haley and Sarahand Kristen and Katherine and John they all still deal with guests, but none of them are cursed to deal withguests 24-7. We have support staff that take the median of the day like the housekeeping turnover, post housekeeping, and it takes all that time that they need to do other stuff. This allows them to do their job so that way they don't resent guests for taking them away from their critical work like managing staff andmanaging inventory. They do some stuff in the evenings and some stuff in the morning with guests but nobody's doing so much guesswork that they burn out. This is a way that you can avoid it.
Team up with another host if you cannot afford to hire someone to do your customer service. Find three otherhosts and take shifts. Co-host for each other and alternate being on call. One person is on call Tuesday nights Wednesday nights so I can have a date night with my family you know or just do anything fun. I’ve got a hobby I want to go kickboxing on Thursdays. Work with hosts and if you work for them for free they work for you for free you've teamed up and now you have a way that some of you can have some days off. Even if you don't get the much deserved days off if you don't get the good guests and you're being punished by the universe with bad guests you need to let it end there. You need to find a way to hit that reset button every new guest needs a fresh amazing start you owe them that and if you do that your reviews will stay higher and you'll get better guests karma will pay you back
