What happens when the system running your short-term rentals works perfectly, but only because you are the one holding it together? In this conversation, I sit down with Beth Turner, founder of SimpliHost, to unpack the exact moment a host realizes their setup cannot be handed to anyone else. We talk about her accidental start in real estate, the seven duct-taped tools she used to run her properties, the handoff test that exposes where your business is really just living in your head, and why the two tasks hosts cling to longest are the ones they should let go of first. If you have ever felt like your rentals are managing you instead of the other way around, this one is worth your time.
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What happens when the system running your short-term rentals works perfectly, but only because you are the one holding it together? In this conversation, I sit down with Beth Turner, founder of SimpliHost, to unpack the exact moment a host realizes their setup cannot be handed to anyone else. We talk about her accidental start in real estate, the seven duct-taped tools she used to run her properties, the handoff test that exposes where your business is really just living in your head, and why the two tasks hosts cling to longest are the ones they should let go of first. If you have ever felt like your rentals are managing you instead of the other way around, this one is worth your time.
Hello everybody, welcome back. I’m Adrienne Green and today we’re with Beth Turner. Here we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs break free of the grind and create the freedom they wanted at the start, and Beth is a perfect example of how to do that. So thank you for joining me, Beth. Welcome.
Thank you so much for having me.
Beth, for those who don’t know you yet, can you give us a quick picture of your short-term rental portfolio? How many properties, what markets, and how did you get started in it?
Well, I have an interesting start, but currently I have just one remaining in Wisconsin. Otherwise, I’ve had up to four of them. They’ve been in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and then I did a journey of some flipping, flipping fixes. I’ve done the journeys of also still own some long-term rentals. But how I got started in real estate was a complete accident. I am a huge Milwaukee Brewers fan, and my mother and I would go down to Arizona every year for spring training, and we’re probably like, or three years in a row we had host cancel on us last minute. This was before Airbnb, it was still HomeAway, it wasn’t even VRBO yet, and my brilliant mind was like, fine, I’ll buy my own condo down here. I flew down there just thinking I’m just going to look at it. I messaged a realtor online, never met them in person, we went to the very first house and he was like, somebody canceled their building contract, and he’s like, if you don’t buy this, I will. I was like, I didn’t even bring my checkbook, this is the days of the checkbooks, and he’s like, don’t worry, I’ll go get you the deposit. He took me to his bank, gave me a thousand dollar cashier’s check. I was like, do you need my ID? Anything as collateral? He’s like, no, you look like good people. And so I bought a condo. Called my mom and I was like, I bought a condo. She’s like, I didn’t think you took a checkbook. I said, I did it. And then realized, oh, I don’t live here in Arizona. So what am I going to do the rest of the time?
Wow.
And so that’s how I became an accidental STR host. I was like, well, I guess the best way to do this is to rent it out. And so I did that process and learned hosting in the roughest, roughest way of total trial by error. And I did it all remotely. I lived in Wisconsin and Phoenix, Arizona is where my condo was.
I love that. I just love this whole story. I’m a baseball fan. Baseball analogies are my go-to all the time. We’ll probably have some in here. And I love how you solved the problem. You solved the problem of, I want a place to stay. That’s amazing. And I assume now, with everything you do that we’ll get into, you’re really helping other people so they don’t have to learn through trial and error.
Yes. That is realistically pretty much where I’m at in my journey. I’ve gone through, I think the one thing that people can really realize is that help is totally fine. You do not need to do this on your own. There’s a lot of information out there as well. So you can get lost in self-helping too. So it’s okay to raise your hand and say, hey, I need a coach. I need a mastermind. I just need a group of people I can bounce ideas off of, whatever that might be. But there’s a lot of help out there, and how can we help streamline that help is really where I came into, and kind of where the journey I’m at now.
I love that. Now let’s continue through your journey. My understanding is you had a system that worked, but it was like seven different tools held together with duct tape, which we’ve been there. At what point, kind of like with getting the condo in Arizona, did you realize that this STR system issue was a problem worth solving?
So I had a bunch of other hosts that I was friends with and they would ask me, hey, can you set up my system to be like yours? And I was like, guys, bubble gum and duct tape over here. I’m techie enough where I had seven different systems. I was using Zapier to connect all these systems. I was using a texting system, a PMS, a cleaning system, a CRM, all of these things. But it worked great for me because it all worked and I understood all the little back ends. So if one would fail, I could go figure out where it was.
And so it worked great for me, but then I realized it wasn’t scalable for anybody else. There’s part of being on top of the mountain, like woohoo, I have some really great automation. But being on that mountain by yourself and seeing your friends struggle is not a fun spot to be in. And so finally, one of them, their first or fourth time, was like, why don’t you just build it the way that you built yours? And I was like, build it? I don’t know anything about software development. I’m techie enough to cobble these things together, but I can’t code. I don’t know what I’m doing. And this really started two years ago. So this was way before the AI world took over. So you really needed to code and needed to be a developer. And so I said, all right, we’ll figure it out. And we started figuring it out. And that’s where it came to the journey of, how do I help other hosts get back the time that I got, without super complex systems, without bouncing between seven different ones, and really duct taping everything together.
I love that, and I get what you’re saying. I’m curious, as you worked to build this new system, what are the key differences that you identified between a system that works and a system that actually scales?
So a system that works is something that can get you through to two to three properties. You’re still, a guest will text you on this system. They’ll say, hey, can I check in early? And you’re like, oh, hold on, I’ve got to look over the other system to see if they can or can’t check in early. Is the house really ready? So once you start getting to that point of, well, now I’m still the glue that’s holding this together, even though we’ve got duct tape and bubble gum in the back end, I’m still the glue that’s making that operation continue.
So once we start hitting that scalable point, I had another host ask me to co-host for them. And I was like, oh, I’ve got to have this be more systemized. I’ve got to be able to not just say, for example, they wanted to say, oh, can I come in and make a couple of changes? And I’d have to give you seven logins. There’s no way. I would love to have you in here, I’m not trying to be hidden, I want to be transparent, but girl, you’re going to have some fun in this system with me. So when I hit the point of I couldn’t help others, I also couldn’t scale past two or three of them because it was still me keeping the ball moving and me making those decisions. And then talking to these other hosts, I was like, this is definitely the point where we’ve got to get some policies in place and then procedures. And when I say that, people usually get scared. They’re like, I’ve got to create this manual that’s step by step by step. And it’s just as simple as, for example, we had some hot tubs at our properties, and if a hot tub had an issue, the first time it happened I was like, what do I do? Do I give a guest a refund? How much? We just put a policy in place that anytime a guest has an issue, it’s $50 a night for a refund if they have things. So it takes the pressure off of, what is my next step? And then it starts building that system that’s scalable. So when we hand those over to our VAs or to a property manager, they have that information so they’re not guessing either.
This is really resonating with me. I always view things as, I don’t want to solve the same problem twice. It’s okay to have problems. It’s okay to have issues. And yet when they happen, how can we improve our system so that next time it happens, it’s not a problem? We just automatically know what to do. And so it sounds like you are doing exactly that.
100%. For example, one of the things we built was an FAQ in our system. So like, do you supply firewood? Or is the grill gas or charcoal? Do we need to bring things, those types of pieces? Some of that stuff is already captured in the OTA. So your Airbnbs, your VRBOs, oh, they have a grill, but are they supplying propane? It’s a gas grill, but do we supply propane? So all those different types of things, to your point, we just need to keep iterating because there are so many things that one little guest will ask. But then now we don’t have to worry about answering and tracking down that answer for the next guest.
Yes, and for any short-term rental owner, they can totally resonate with that. I get asked all the time, even though it’s in our listing descriptions, what kind of grill it is. Now, you have something called the handoff test, right? If you had to give your entire operation to someone else tomorrow, what would break first? Can you talk us through that?
I think the handoff test, the biggest thing is how much knowledge is in your head. That is the easiest thing that it’s testing. How many things have you not documented yet or not put a policy in place?
So the things that are going to break are like not having a video walkthrough of your house, or not having a floor plan. So when somebody calls and says, where is this? It’s in that person’s head who’s the only one that’s walked that property. You can put together, it’s a gas grill and you bring propane. But when they say, hey, I can’t find where the electrical panel is because we just had a power surge, you’ve got to be able to give them that information. And so those are usually the spots of the handoff test. It instantly tells you where your system is not a system. It’s really just in your head.
And I would say the one thing for me that was the best handoff test is doing it remotely. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t the person that knew where everything was. So I had to go and build those systems. And remote usually scares the crap out of people. And I don’t disagree. If you don’t have the right kind of, not necessarily processes, but the right team and the right system in place, it can be very scary. It can be very stressful. But if you have the right team and you’ve got the right systems in place, it is a lot less stressful, because it forces you to put those systems in. So you’re not the cog in the wheel causing the bottleneck.
Beth, I totally agree. When we got our first long-term investment property, there were a lot of growing pains, because we couldn’t just run over and handle things ourselves. And yet that’s what really prompted me to start running my business more efficiently. So now I can run all my properties while I travel the world with my family. We are speaking the same language here. So let’s talk more about the tech piece. And yet, even with the tech piece, you do need a team as well. We need someone to run the tech, right? So at what point in a host’s growth does bringing in support, like a VA, a co-host, a property manager, someone beyond the cleaner and the handyman, someone who’s helping with operations, when does that become less optional and more necessary?
It’s when you want to change your lifestyle and when you’re changing your mindset. It’s also when you’re scaling. Those are the two pieces. So you might have somebody that got into this as just a side hustle and they really enjoyed it. And now they’re like, hey, I just want it to truly be a side hustle. I don’t want to grow it. I just want to step all the way out. That’s when you’re going to start looking at, do you want to have somebody co-host it? Do you want to just have a VA? Because when you’re also looking at the time, effort, and the cost of those things too, it comes down to, do I want to get a property manager or a co-host? Or can I just hire a VA to handle these onesie-twosies because I’ve built a really great system in place and I just don’t want to have any of those items?
For example, it might even be, I don’t want to be the one dropping off the Amazon packages or going to Costco. I just need somebody to go restock. That is not a full-time person sometimes. So depending on where you are in your lifestyle, to your point, if you want to travel all the time, you might just need a local college kid, a stay-at-home mom that wants a couple of hours to just be able to go and run and do those types of things that a property manager could do too, if you hired them, or you want to keep it all in house. So it becomes less optional when you make a lifestyle change or you scale. Once you start hitting that three to four mark from an STR standpoint specifically, that’s when you’re going to say, all right, do I want to be the one managing these? Do I want to be the one getting the guest message and responding to it? We also have great AI tools coming out in lots of different spaces. At the same time, they’re all still tools. So how do you want to leverage them? Do you want to not leverage them? And how good are they in all those different spaces? And again, AI is just as good as how much information you give it. So when we talk about building those systems out, if you don’t have it documented where your lockbox is, and a guest sends you a message at midnight that they can’t get in, AI can’t tell you where that lockbox is either.
Yes, I agree completely. Now, as somebody starts to grow with a team, they start to get someone else in there to do some of this work, what tasks or responsibilities are you seeing a host hold onto the longest? And what do you think is behind that reluctance to let go?
I would say there’s probably two, depending on where they are in their journey. One of the things as hosts that we don’t realize is we’re running a business. Because it always feels like a side hustle, no matter how big or small we are, until we fully quit our jobs. It’s not really a business, but it really is. And I think that’s a mindset shift that really has to happen. But for example, guest messaging and bookkeeping are always the two that I see hosts hold onto. Guest messaging is purely for the fear of, I’m going to send the wrong message. So for example, we had a guest that was coming in for a funeral, and I had anxiety of, I hope my happy automated messages don’t go out, like welcome, hope you have a great time. Until you have really good systems in place for that, because your normal guest automations will just send out a, we look forward to having you. Or you have to dial down your happiness in some of your pieces so it can be more broad. So when you’re building those automated messages, thinking of people that come for a birthday and a funeral, can you get that message across both ways? Sometimes not at all.
So it’s handing off those types of guest messaging. That I think is one of the biggest holdups, that they feel they’re going to miss something. I’m going to send something that’s not personalized, or it’s going to come across as, I kicked out an automated message and I don’t care. So I think a lot of the guest messaging, and then also making sure things don’t get missed. For example, the guest that sends a message at 11 o’clock, midnight. I better be up all night to make sure they’re getting checked in. I’ll check the cameras to see if they’re here yet.
So those types of things, guest messaging, and then bookkeeping, because everybody wants to hold onto their finances, but nobody really wants to do them either. I’ll have my weekly bookkeeping meeting with myself, and then it’s like, I can do so many other things. But at the same time, I don’t want to hand that off because somebody else will be in my finances. It’s one of those double-edged swords. So it depends on how comfortable you are with your finances. Anytime you outsource, it forces you to have a system and clean up your ways.
Right.
Because if I’m using my personal credit card for everything, including personal and business, that is harder to hand off to an accountant or a bookkeeper. And so it again resets and makes you think about your processes and what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.
Those are so true, both of those. The guest messaging, I know when I get a new VA, I’m always like, you draft the messages and I check them before you send them, until we know that everything is good, because you can’t undo them. That’s my concern there. And I have seen, yes.
Correct. It’s not like your iPhone where you can undo that message.
Yes. And I’ve seen behind the scenes with so many entrepreneurs, it’s so funny, because unless somebody has someone else doing their bookkeeping, they’re not up to date. And yet entrepreneurs hold onto it. Just like you said, I’m like, dude, just give it to someone else. Just make a system where you take a photo of the receipt and you email it to them, or you put it in a Google Drive, and they handle 98 percent of it with no extra input by you. And you’re going to be able to get an updated profit and loss and balance sheet and everything once you do that. And it’s so powerful when you have that.
And one thing you mentioned too is the VAs. So we also leverage them. There’s always conversations of offshore, bringing people in, I only want to hire local. And realistically, the one thing you have to think about is everybody is a person and you are helping them in any way that you’re doing that. So when we lift up others, we help them lift up all the people around them too. We have some people offshore, so we’ve got some in Bulgaria, Zimbabwe, we have some VAs in the Philippines, we have our key VAs all over the place.
It’s not necessarily, oh, I’m just trying to save costs, or I don’t want made in the USA. None of those things is always the driver in those cases. It’s also, how do I get this done efficiently and effectively? And then how do I also still help the people around me, even those people who are not physically around me? So when you talk about the VAs, you set up your people, you set up your systems, and then you trust but verify. And that’s that next step. Everybody thinks, we all think that we’re the best at everything we do. For the bookkeeping, I’m like, well, I’m the only one who can do it, but then I don’t do it. So we all overinflate our capabilities. And we also underinflate our time and how much we really have to knock out some of these things. So same thing when we onboard anybody. It’s just like anything, you give the training wheels. Think of when you change jobs. If I change to something as basic as I’m going to go be a bartender, they don’t just let you sign up and say, hey, go throw yourself in the weeds the first day. They still have you shadow, they have you train, they have these pieces in place to make not only the guest at the restaurant happy, or the guest at the STR, it’s to also set their people up for success. So there’s a kill two birds with one stone. You’re not only making the guest and the client experience better, but you’re also making the person and the employee experience better as well.
I love that, because yes, I think especially people who get into entrepreneurship, they get into real estate investing and they don’t have any business training. They don’t think about onboarding. They’re just like, yeah, they’re going to come and know what to do. And they don’t. It doesn’t magically go in their brain.
Yeah, like Mary Poppins is going to show up with all the answers.
Yes, exactly. All right, so we’ve talked about the people piece. Now let’s talk about the tech piece, because I would like to hear more about SimpliHost, this platform that you built to help solve the seven different tools with duct tape and bubble gum issue.
So again, we kind of started it because we really wanted to help. It just comes down to that. Like I said, the system that I had worked for me completely, but I couldn’t help other people get that time back. And one thing we realized is that yes, everybody has, we hear the term tech stack sometimes in the tech world, here’s my tech stack or here’s my system stack. Even though those things work in the regard of, my PMS will send my reservations to my cleaning system, my cleaning system will see that, and then create the cleaning task, there’s still time lost bouncing between those systems.
We hear, back in the day, remember when you put it on your resume, I’m a multitasker, and that was seen as a great thing? There’s so much research now that multitasking is really not a great thing. When you can focus and just stick to one thing, especially in the digital world that we’re in. I might get a text message from my guest in my one system. They’re asking me to check in early while I’m about to slide over to my PMS to see if the house is ready or do we have a back-to-back? I get an Instagram notification, or something else. Now I get distracted for that second. And especially I have ADHD, so that is very distracting to me. But we also lose our efficiency. We just lose some of our time bouncing between those.
So for example, right now, if I wanted to see in my previous seven-application system, a guest would send a text message, can we check in early? I would get that text message. Keeping in mind we’re always on our phones, so I’m traveling while I’m on this. I see this app, okay, hold on, I’m going to swipe that closed, I’m going to go find my PMS, I’m going to find the calendar, I’ve got to find the person that just sent me the message because the PMS doesn’t know who just sent me the message. And I say, great, yes, we can check in early. Okay. So then I’ve got to go back to the text system, send the message, and then now if I have a VA that is managing my PMS, they don’t know that I sent a text message over the text message system because they don’t talk to each other, only high-level talking. And so you start introducing all of these layers of inefficiency, as well as the siloed pockets of information.
So for example, the funeral example I had, I was like, I swear my guest told me they were coming for a funeral. I couldn’t find it in my PMS. And I was like, oh, I need to make sure that the wording has changed. I couldn’t find it in my PMS because they had texted me on my texting system. So now, if our EA wanted to, I said, hey, go through and just make sure everybody’s good from a funeral standpoint, or we have holidays coming up, let’s go and update some of those messages, they still don’t get the full picture. So we lose out on, yes, we have the systems that get us there, and we’re happy to the point of everything is automated, this tech stack really gets us there, but we still lose a lot in balancing between those different systems.
And you didn’t even mention that if you’re going to give that person early check-in, now you have to go to your digital lock, if you have one of those, and change when their code starts working on top of it too.
100%. Exactly. I go and send them a message, you’re good to check in, and they say, well, at what time? And I say, does noon work for you? And they say, actually, can we do 11? I have now bounced back and forth four to five times, and then to your point, they finally say 11, then I go to my locks and update it, or I go to my PMS that will update it, but I’m still in multiple systems.
Right. So what does SimpliHost do differently?
So it combines that whole scenario into one system, as well as a couple of other areas. So if a guest says, hey, can I check in early? There are a couple of data points that I need. I need to know, is there a back-to-back? Is the house ready? And are there any other pieces I need to know about this? Do we have a maintenance command coming during this time? Is anything happening right before that? So now when I get that message, number one, the text message comes into the same thread that they’re coming in from Airbnb, so I can see the whole conversation in one spot. If I say yes, I can see now in the top right-hand corner of my side it says the house is vacant clean, we are good to go, because it says that the cleaner finished their checkout task and their checkout cleaning, and it updated the status of the house automatically. And so then the last thing I can do is say, instead of a 3 p.m. check-in, it’s going to be noon, I update the time, and it automatically sends out the lock notifications to update that to noon as well. And then I can go, still all within the same screen, send the message to the guest, say yeah, we’re good for noon.
Awesome. That is a lot easier.
And that’s all without leaving one screen, which to me is even just the better part. I’m not even bouncing between multiple screens in the system. I’m in one screen that whole time, because we try to present that information all in one area for those types of scenarios.
So I can already see some differences with what you’ve built versus like Hospitable, which I use right now as a PMS, which does a lot, but it doesn’t include text or anything like that. And the other one I know a lot of people use is OwnerRez. So could you do a comparison, Hospitable slash OwnerRez versus what you’ve built with SimpliHost?
Yeah, absolutely. So for example, I also was on Hospitable. That was my PMS, because it comes with a lot of those pieces that I needed. Another area that I really struggled with is that we hand-write the welcome notes to all of our guests. And there was no spot for me to put that in Hospitable, or I had to create a separate task, and it was still all manual in doing those pieces. So when I’m looking at the system, we have special instructions, welcome message, and internal notes. So that is presented to a cleaner as well. When they go to their cleaning task, they can see, when is the next upcoming guest? Are there any special notes? What’s the welcome basket message? Those types of things. And so right now you have to utilize both Hospitable and something internal for their cleaning checklists, as well as create a task or do something manual to send a welcome message.
So the combination of those types of things is where we built in the same functionality, such as requiring photos, a full checklist, reference photos. So if I need to say, hey, this is what the kitchen should look like after you’re done, you can do all those pieces. So we really combine true built-in cleaning, inspections, maintenance, checklists, and that task functionality into one system. As well as the ability, one thing that we also hear people struggling with a little bit is that there’s not enough device connectivity in some of these PMSs. And so we partnered with another company called Seam, and they connect to over, I think, like 150 locks and a lot of different thermostats, even the noise monitors like Minut and NoiseAware, so you can check the battery statuses and set thresholds for all of your different noise monitoring. So again, all of that being in one system.
Yeah, because I will say right now, if there is an issue or I’m checking something, I’m going between Hospitable, Schlage, and whatever our system is for our cameras.
Yeah. That’s one thing that’s also coming down the pipeline, Ring cameras are coming in through this company Seam too. So we can then check, see how your battery is doing. Right now I still manage that in a separate system. I’ll get a message from Ring saying 716 front door battery low, and then I have to remind someone, send the cleaner a message to do that. We’re hoping to automate all that as well in the future. So even garage door openers are included in some of these devices too. So if a guest calls you and says, hey, I’m having a problem with the garage code, I can’t get in. If you have some of those smart devices, I think it’s Genie and I can’t think of the other one, but they have the ability to open up garage doors. Again, from that side panel, the button, unlock, open up the garage door. Even from the standpoint of a guest with a lock, sometimes guests will try the same code and they don’t hit the one button that says enter, or the check mark button, and sometimes the keypad freezes out on them and they’ll be like, you’ve tried too many times, just a beep at them. Same thing, when we’re in our inbox and a guest calls, I can push an unlock button and it just automatically unlocks the door for them, lets them in.
That is nice. I love this. Now, how long has this product been out? How long ago did you launch?
It is new. I think we launched, oh gosh, I should know this off the top of my head. We only launched like a month and a half ago. So we are new to this space. But at the same time, it’s been a two-year journey of love to get us here. So it’s not necessarily something that just came up. I always love the overnight successes, it’s like 16 years of overnight success.
So it is fairly new. We have our founding members active right now. So we are fully available to anybody who wants to sign up and come and join. Right now, everybody’s being onboarded by me as well, because I want to get as much feedback as we can into the system. We are updating all of our co-hosting tools as well. So for those that co-host and want owner portals, owner statements, we will have those up in the next couple of weeks as well, to redo what we currently have from the feedback we’ve already gotten.
And I think you also mentioned OwnerRez. I was just talking to a co-host yesterday, and she helps new hosts determine, do they need a property manager, or can they still just self-manage? And she was saying it depends on if they’re just going to do it themselves. There are systems that have a very high learning curve, and OwnerRez is one of those, it’s a high learning curve. And so if you’re just going to be doing one and you’re just doing it for tax purposes, or you just kind of want to enjoy it, building out a really robust system is a little too much. And then same thing with Hospitable, there might be some pieces that they would really like, like not having to go to Schlage, not having to also go do this. And so we’re bridging the gap between those two, of not having as steep of a learning curve, and then also still having a robust system that does not require that steep learning curve.
The not having a steep learning curve speaks to my core. I was actually just looking for one of our other businesses at accounting options, and one I was like, this is interesting, and then all the reviews were like, steep learning curve, you need to probably pay someone to build it out for you. And I was like, eliminated, eliminated, no way. So yeah, you’re hitting all the right spots there. So if somebody is interested in learning more about SimpliHost, or they’re interested in connecting with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
So we have the typical Facebook, Instagram. So we’re at SimpliHost Inc, and it’s SimpliHost with an I, we’re still, nobody owns the Y, but we’re trying to get that website so we can at least direct people there. So we’re SimpliHost with an I. And then you can also get a hold of me personally at Beth Turner on Instagram as well as Facebook. So I’m always happy to help get the feedback.
And if we ever see spots, I think the next space that we might move into is a little bit of the MTR space, because I’ve also done MTR and there is not really a system that juggles both STR and MTR well. And so we’re always looking to say, hey, where’s everybody going? What’s everybody’s next steps? We have the base, feature for feature, we can go toe to toe with Hospitable, OwnerRez, Guesty, all of this, every day and all day. From a separation of what is different from us versus this group or that group, it’s usually going to be, how do we treat our customers? How do we want to keep evolving and growing? And then how do we actually get there? Is it, hey, thank you so much for giving your feedback, throw it in the back bin? Or how do we get that actual, hey, we hear you, we’re hosts ourselves, and we have this really deep connection to the host community, and how can we keep that moving? And that’s, I think, the thing that’s going to separate us from some of the other PMSs as well. But also just seeing this from a true holistic, I don’t want to be in seven systems anymore, guys.
Right. Yes. Somebody who’s actually done it themselves, and not like so many things in our world now are owned by private equity. Maybe they were started by someone who cared, but now they’re owned by private equity and it’s all about cutting costs, making them better to sell, IPO, something like that. That’s something I see in a lot of the businesses I deal with. And so I love this, being able to work with somebody who’s in it themselves.
Exactly. We call it in the SaaS world, software as a service, bootstrapping. This is where it’s just us. There’s no big investor that came in and gave us, we didn’t do rounds of funding or anything like that. It is just me and our funds doing this, and also just a passion to want to be able to help, and a passion to continue to create better systems to get people to buy back their time. We want to be able to help rental owners manage their properties without their properties managing them.
Right, totally, and that’s what we’re here for, because so many people get into real estate for freedom, and then they don’t get it. They get another job. More things to tie them down, less vacation time. So I love that you’re helping counter that. That’s what we’re all about.
Yes. I would say the only thing that I would part with, when people say, one of the biggest misnomers I think out there right now, is that STR is passive income. I don’t know who started that trend. It is not passive income. It can be, don’t get me wrong, it absolutely can be. But coming into this brand new, it is not passive income. There’s a lot of information out there. You have to set up these systems. Once you get these systems, it can be very passive, but it’s not day one out of the box, day 30 out of the box, that you’re just passive, getting the mailbox money that we hear about in long-term rentals. It is not passive income, but there are plenty of ways for us to help get that to passive income.
I love that. That is definitely resonating. Well, thank you so much, Beth, and thank you to our listeners. That is a wrap on today’s episode. Please join me again next week for another amazing episode with another awesome guest.
Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.