“If you rely only on OTAs, you’ve lost control—direct bookings give you the freedom and stability to weather anything.” — Federico Zimerman
From a spare bedroom in Buenos Aires to managing 75+ properties and opening a boutique inn in the Catskills, Federico Zimerman’s journey is anything but ordinary. On this episode of Booked Solid, Gil welcomes Federico to unpack how an airline trainer turned STR operator is now helping hosts future-proof their businesses through intentional branding, operational systems, and direct booking strategy.
Summary and Highlights
🧰 About Federico Zimerman
Federico, also known as @strguide on Instagram, brings a global lens to the short-term rental industry. After 10 years traveling as a corporate trainer for a major U.S. airline, he transitioned into STR property management—first remotely from Argentina, and later building a multi-state management firm after moving to the U.S. He now manages properties across 16 states, holds equity in a boutique hotel, and is opening a bar in New York. His mission? Empower owners to run resilient, guest-first businesses.
🔍 What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why Federico believes being “de-listed” from OTAs can destroy your income if you aren’t ready
- How direct bookings gave him leverage during a 3-month listing removal
- The systems he uses (Notion, Hostaway, HappyGuest) to operationalize trust and consistency
- What safety checklists taught him about guest trust and brand building
- How AI, like ChatGPT, became a surprising tool in optimizing health, team workflows, and guest service
📚 Federico’s Book Recommendations
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
🪡 Mindset Takeaway
“Be persistent and patient. You won’t see results on Day 1, but if you trust the process and keep showing up, the seeds will grow.”
💬 Connect with Federico
- Instagram: @strguide
Transcription
Federico: Even though I relied on this OTAs to grow my business and they were amazing and they were simple to use, I understand that to have a healthy long-term business sustainable all time, I had to have control of my bookings on my traffic and my properties. And if something happens, because we had a property being the listed and fairly, in my opinion, I was able to get it back up after like three months of challenging the LTA.
Federico: In the meantime, we got a few direct bookings on other platforms I hadn’t used before, like booking.com. And that was good because you know, you get the list of the, one of the big platforms, it’s like is a death sentence for a lot of people. It’s like you lost your investment. Yeah. Like everything’s gone.
Federico: And by building this, we were able to, oh look, we’re getting Google vacation rental bookings. Again, direct bookings.
Gil: Before we bring on my guest, I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it all to work.
Gil: But if your site isn’t really built to convert. You’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire, and even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.
Gil: You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build Craft Estates is purpose built for short-term rentals and designed from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into bookings.
Gil: And you can keep on testing and improving. As you learn, you can make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to craft stays.co and start your free trial. Now let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing.
Gil: Federico, welcome to the show.
Federico: Thanks, man. I’m excited to be here. I know we’ve been trying to schedule this for a while and finally we made it happen.
Gil: Yeah. Yes. It’s been, it’s been a long while, I think on both parts.
Federico: Oh yeah. Mostly of mine. So
Gil: for what it’s worth, the last one was My fault. Um, so we do, I think both of us, actually, a lot of folks in the industry actually live pretty busy lives, so I’m not surprised, uh, that some of these times we, we get things, uh, rescheduled.
Federico: things get crazy, uh, in this industry
Federico: du moment.
Gil: Yeah. Never tell him for sure, for sure. Um, we met at Level Up, I think you were probably the tallest guy I saw at Level
Gil: for that specifically that conference, um, being a male there and being the tallest male there, you definitely stuck out like a, like a nail there.
Federico: I know, I know, but I’m used to this being
Federico: all my life like that. But I know it’s weird and it’s pretty funny as well. I know people look at me like this,
Federico: uh, like I’m not used to looking at people in the eyes when I’m standing up or less like looking up. So it’s, it’s pretty funny when I see someone’s my height or taller.
Federico: I’m six six. I think. Uh,
Federico: listen, I’m from ARG today. I use mirrors. I’m still like, I’m trying to remember fits and inches and all that, but I think I’m six six.
Gil: yeah. Uh, that’s still pretty tall. Um, I was, uh, I saw Justin last, last week and I just realized that you actually had a picture with Justin. You
Federico: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Gil: next, like you’re basically the same height and I feel so small next to Justin. Every time I’m next to him.
Federico: Yeah. Where, where do you see him?
Gil: was he at VR Nation?
Gil: Yes, he was at VR Nation and he was also at the STR Hospitality Summit as well too.
Federico: nice. Yeah. Justin, I did a certification with, uh, we, we got along pretty well because I did the, the, uh, safety certification. I’ve been just praising his teaching and, you know, spreading the world, the, the word, the, the gospel of safety, you know, my properties and other people, and, uh, I love what he’s doing.
Federico: So shout out to, to Justin. Great guy. And he’s on a mission and he’s doing something incredible for the industry.
Gil: You know what you’re, you’re absolutely right. I, I, I think you’re, you’re reminding me that like, I actually should bring him onto the show because I think that, like Justin, he’s pretty unique where he’s talking about a topic that no one wants to talk about, no one wants to talk about, and he has so much passion in it.
Federico: yeah, and I’m gonna tell you something. Uh, when I did a certification, I started talking to all my clients because this, this is something that you don’t know, what you don’t know, right? Um, we’re talking about the safety certification for short-term rentals. I’m certified as a short-term rental safety inspector, just for anywhere you wondering what we’re talking about. I did a certification. I started reaching out to all my clients, like, Hey, we need to do this, this, this, this, uh, you know, mowing the grills and put in fire extinguishers and all this. I was about to take on one of, uh, Sarah Gladwell’s, uh, properties from the car walls in Michigan. We were doing onboarding.
Federico: I still wasn’t managing the property. I told her, get the fire extinguishers. She got them three days later, grilled fire in an enclosed area
Federico: and that fire extinguisher saved the house. Um, but still they were not doing everything I was saying until Justin came last year, and he was, this year I didn’t get to see him as briefly in the Mission short rental conference. Uh, and he did his speech and, and then they were like, okay, we’re doing everything you say. It’s like, okay, we’re finding moving the grill out from there and all the that stuff. Um, but yeah, he, he’s incredible and really suggest he has a lot of like webinars and things out there that you can watch. Um, but that was the, the one thing coming, you know, I’m from Argentina, I moved to America two and a half years ago, and I just need two things moving to America.
Federico: I don’t want to go to jail for missing my taxes and I don’t want to get sued. And, you know, I was being careful and scared about short-term rental, why something happens and, you know, being, having your safety checklist in place is the number one thing to be protected. Because even if you have your insurance, if you have a debt drop in your house and your guest, uh, you know, get the hurt or something worse, uh, it’s gonna be on you even if you have insurance.
Federico: Right.
Gil: yeah.
Federico: So I don’t wanna scare anybody. Just go there, learn and, and do what you gotta do.
Gil: I mean, honestly, there’s a, there’s probably a lot, lots of different levels on it, and. I feel like on my side, my properties are pretty safe. We have one that’s a brand new build and like the standards are pretty high on new builds, and we’re all, like, both my, both markets that were in Branson and in the Smoky Mountains, we’re pretty, they’re pretty well regulated where fire inspection happens every year.
Gil: In Branson, we have the health inspection. They actually test our, our hot tub waters. So like it’s pretty stringent and the checklist that they actually go through is actually pretty, pretty thick.
Federico: I wish every, everybody, every place will be like that.
Gil: and honestly that, that, that’s kind of what I like wanna talk about, like, and want to get to is like, I actually think that.
Gil: As the industry is going through so much scrutiny right now and people are trying to ban short-term rentals, I think that what’s gonna end up happening, and we talked about this a lot at the SG Hospitality summit, is that these regulations are happening because there’s this lack of standards. There’s a lack of quality bar there.
Gil: And I think that when folks, when hosts and property managers really try to one band together to talk about these, these regulations together as a group, and two, when we come up with standards where we say, if we’re operating a short term rental, we should be doing these X, Y, or Z things like we’re, we’re just being responsible.
Gil: Homeowners are being responsible neighborhoods as well too, like neighbors. And I think that when, when that starts to happen, we should expect to see the regulations start to pull back or at least weed out the folks that are not doing these. Like these quality standards and the permits are only gonna be available to those that really meet that.
Gil: And I think that that’s kind of where we’re probably headed like two, three years down the road.
Federico: I agree a hundred percent with you. I think that’s gonna be mostly in like large areas or high tour, you know, dependent areas. The other problem is that you have a lot of like little, you know, townships, counties and stuff like that. They don’t even know, they don’t even care. And they’re like, oh, I’m gonna limit your occupancy on the septic tank size. It’s like, dude, I can pump it twice in a year. That’s not a problem. I don’t want my, you know, yard being filled with, um, dark water. But it’s like just getting across on explaining to your community and showing what you can do to keep your place safe. Because at the end of the day, yeah, anyone can open an short term rental on Airbnb. Um, you know, listing Airbnb is pretty like low barrier to entry level. Uh, and that’s the problem. And I, the, the fact that Airbnb doesn’t mandate you to have, uh, smoke detectors and those type of things, like, again, coming from Argentina every winter, we see a lot of this for carbon monoxide for, Space heaters being plugged in a, in a extension cord where the gauge of the wires not taken off and stuff like that. So yeah, it’s just something that I, I hope that it becomes an industry standard, but, uh, yeah. Uh, we we’re doing a little bit from direct booking, but I think it’s a super important topic for people.
Gil: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think that the, to kind of weed that back into it is that like, I think that like as the. We’re probably in this like really big growth period right now in the industry where we, we went through this big wave. A lot of small, little hosts started getting into the industry, especially during the beginning of the pandemic when there’s this big gold rush into it.
Gil: And there was that lack of standards there. And Airbnb has been on the rise where year after year they’re performing really well and they’re getting a bigger, sizable market share. But at the same time. Then the standards hasn’t really like caught up at, at all. And I think we’re starting to see people like Justin for people or organizations like Rent Responsibility and like these types of organizations are starting to try to bring things together and trying to make it a little bit order.
Gil: And to some, the order feels uncomfortable. Like who wants to talk to Justin Ford about like, like risk, but the folks that are talking to them like yourself, um, those are the folks that are spearheading kind of where we should be taking in the industry and how should we, should be looking at things. So I think that there will be a bit of a shift there.
Gil: It’s gonna be uncomfortable for a lot of folks, but like once you’re in it, it’s actually not that bad for, for me. All my properties have always been in vacation rental markets. I’ve always had regulations, I’ve always had inspections. And because of that, it’s no big deal. Like if I, if I buy, when we bought our second property, I knew our checklist items.
Gil: I knew where I needed to put my extinguishers. I knew like I needed a pool alarm, I needed to have sensors on the doors. Uh, like all these different things we knew about because we’ve already kind of established ourselves in, in that area. And it’s no big deal for us. Uh, it’s another thing that we need to do, but it’s the right thing to do.
Federico: yeah, no, I’m coming from a different background. I mean, I started hosting in 2018 in my spare bedroom in Buenos Aires. I was like the original, kinda like Airbnb idea of, you know, I have an extra bedroom, I need to, you know, pay the bills. And I live in, I used to live in a pretty popular, touristy, nice area.
Federico: I was like, okay, let’s get some people. And the first people that we got was like a Brazilian couple, and he talked to us and was looking for. Vegetarian places in Buenos Aires, which is kinda like odd.
Federico: And then the second girl came and stayed for like two months and we were hanging out and being friends and all that.
Federico: And you know, I started from that background and growing from there. It’s just been, you know, professionalizing something of just a psych gig, a hobby and away to make an extra couple of bucks at the end of the month to pay the bills, honestly.
Federico: So.
Gil: I mean you, I mean you used the word like professionalizing that, like, I think that that’s what we’re going through right now. Um, and maybe like, this is actually a good segue and probably I should have done this earlier, but introducing you onto the show. Give our listeners a bit of context on who, who this six foot, six person is.
Federico: Yeah. So, uh, a little bit of my background and myself, so as I mentioned, well fed ecosystem around, people call me Feather, FEDE. Um, and yeah, I, I started, you know, I, I worked in the, around the. Travel industry meant entire life. Like when I was 18, we moved to a tour, uh, village in Argentina. Uh, then I moved back to Buenos Aires is a big city.
Federico: I got a job at, um, one of the big airlines from the US based in Argentina in the call center. Did that for a year. And then there was opportunity to apply for being a trainer to travel around the world, doing training on the call centers and sometimes airports and ticket offices. Got a job and spent 10 years traveling around the world and teaching people how to, you know, do customer service, how to handle operations, lost bags, revenue management, and all those type of fun things that, you know, gave me.
Federico: I feel the skills from my personal experience traveling and, um, the content, the things I learned in the bus in, in the company to apply into a short rental. So around 2020, um, I. Yeah, before COVID was 2020, right? So 2019 I was trying to move to the US to, to get a job in headquarters. they wanted to bring me because they love me.
Federico: Like I, I was pre awarded in, you know, a company of 120,000 people. I got one of the like employee a year award that they give to a hundred people and stuff like that. So I was doing pretty well, but I didn’t have my college degree. And they’re like, okay, we’re gonna give you an H one B one B. So I know that’s a big topic. It was a big topic a couple months ago, uh, because you don’t have a college degree. So we can justify, you know, why we’re giving the job to someone from Argentina if you can prove in the papers that you’re skilled living, though you are. And that shattered my dreams. Honestly, that was a tough moment for myself.
Federico: I was like, okay, what do I do now? Because it’s like, I have a scene here. Like there’s not a lot of like, growth in the company in Argentina. Argentina was going through a lot of difficult, like economical, really tough economical situation. and then, uh, COVID happens. my dad passed during that time and now I’m trigger my family.
Federico: So it is like really tough. So right around the time, so like literally the month that my, my dad passed, or a month, month before I started as a BA myself, helping people in the us I had a friend from headquarters, who have friends he was investing in, in real estate, and his friends were doing arbitrage of timeshares.
Federico: And basically what they were doing, they were buying this timeshare from Walmart that they let you book or sell their available inventory last minute. So they had like five, 600 listings and these five, 600 listings, you had to update the calendars and then handing reservations and make sure that the, it was available in the website when they confirmed, because then you can cancel and all of this. So it was pretty interesting. I started to learn a lot about how Airbnb works, different tools on Airbnb, building automations, optimizing this whole process. and then with this framework, like, okay, you’re good at this. I want to keep investing. They start picking an arbitrage in the US he was in, in, in Texas. we picked one arbitrage. I started imagining from them from Argentina. We started growing. We had five arbitrages and we started taking clients. And we started growing like this management company, we were around 25, 30 properties. And in that time, my wife, she happens to, pretty likely, her mom grew up in America.
Federico: So she has, she’s an American citizen even though she never lived in America. So around 2020, around everything, like January, 2021, after everything happened with my dad and all of that, I applied for my green card. But because of COVID, everything was delayed. So it took two years. in October, September, 2023, I went to the embassy for, to talk to the council for my interview.
Federico: They approved me, happiest day of my life, one of the happiest day of my life. and then we’re gonna move in February. In November, we’re on a plane already moving to, to the US I had a thousand dollars in my pocket. We landed in Texas, we in Miami with my two dogs and a cat. Drove all the way to Texas and then started life over, continue growing the management company. and then at some point I decided to power waste with my partner. just for different, you know, just goals and vision on what good properties are and stuff like that. And just what type of properties we wanted to manage. And I was already managing, Sarah from the car walls, if you heard about the car walls.
Federico: Pretty popular in the space, her properties in Fort Worth. And she had her mission properties I was talking about before. so she gave me those properties and then I started managing here in apps in New York from good friends. And that was August 23 and or now 25, may 25, almost two years managing 75 properties.
Federico: I have equity. In a couple of properties here in the, in, in Epstein, New York, and, uh, boutique hotel with five rooms about to open a bar and growing the business. So yeah. Living the American dream.
Gil: Wow, dude. That’s, that’s, that’s amazing. So you went from first, like having your W2 corporate job? Uh, I don’t actually, I don’t know if you call it W2
Federico: Yeah. It is a value too. Yeah. It’s exactly that. Yeah.
Gil: but living in the corporate world, and you had the ambitions of coming here to the states, being sponsored by your employer, the airline, and being denied your way H one B because of the credentials.
Gil: Um, but it sounded like that didn’t really stop you. Like you still had the ambitions of coming to coming to America. And I think maybe part serendipity, part like your grit, like it just, it just happened. with that perseverance there.
Federico: Yeah, no, I put that in my mind. I knew it was, it was gonna happen. So how, you know, yeah, it was tough. Like even getting, getting the green card, the green card, it was tough because like, my wife never lived in America and to apply to, to a green card like the one that I got for being married, basically, like, she was like kind of sponsoring me, being American, but she didn’t have like a single tax return to show that she can support me. Right. It’s like, okay, what what is your, your address in the us? Like I don’t have address in the us So we got like, we had to have to get an attorney and she took your perspective. Right? And this is why I love to to to talk about, you know, the American dream and how much I appreciate this country. Even though, you know, I know a lot of people are right now are afraid and I wanna get into politics if you like it or not, whatever is going on.
Federico: Just know that a lot of people are like concerned. I will choose America or any other place in the world because the opportunities, the people, the, the people who move here and founded this country, you know, they came from, you know, it was wild. Like it is similar to Argent. My, my, my, my ancestors are, they also came from Europe and they were trying to find a better life.
Federico: And that’s what I’m doing now. It’s just trying to find a better life. And here you have no idea how easy things are, right? It’s, if you haven’t lived abroad, I was telling my friends, I just bought a, a, a 91 Jeep because Sarah, and they got one. They’re like, you need to get one. I got a Jeep the other day on Monday. And it’s just the process of going to a person, signing a paper, going to the DMB, they even be full. You have a private place, you pay a hundred bucks and they do it for you. The convenience that you have in these countries that doesn’t exist, like doing this, like buying a car in another countries, it may take you like few days a week, maybe a month.
Federico: And the amount of taxes you need to pay is incredible. Opening a business, I tell my friends, dude, I just opened an ULC, took me three days, send an email, do my data one week, have the papers. Start a new business. It’s just like if you come here and you come and grind and you are here, you know, and you are blend to, to, to, to the country here, to collaborate and, and do things better. It’s a fantastic place to be in. I’m pretty happy to be here.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I re I remember back in the early 2000 tens, we, I went through a similar process with one of our, actually I was at my first ever startup and we were working with some offshore engineers and. Phenomenal people, hard hardworking people. And they helped us launch my first ever startup
Gil: and we ended up bringing them on board and we actually brought them to the states to work with them.
Gil: And we actually love working with them. They want to stay in America. And we’re like, okay, let’s figure out how this happen, how to make this happen. That was a really a long process of going through, getting their visas, getting their green cards. But like now, they’re US citizens. They own houses of their own, their own property, multiple properties of their own, and they are living that American dream.
Gil: And it’s, but it wasn’t easy. It like, it’s a hard thing because on his side, I remember he had to go to go back home and he wasn’t sure whether or not he was able to enter back into the States and it took him six months. So he was working remotely for a very long time and there’s a lot of uncertainty in that whole entire process.
Gil: So I can. I could empathize when you’re kind of walking through the things that you had to go through, just how much challenges it is.
Federico: it, it is tough. What It builds character. That’s what I think. I, I, it is pretty funny because I was talking to, uh, new client that just launched a service for revenue management, uh, which is one of my areas I, I love and I’m pretty, pretty good at, um. I was saying to him, he’s from Venezuela, right? And also same, same thing.
Federico: He left like Argentina, Minnesota, went to a similar pro through a similar process of like, you know, uh, challenges in the micro level and micro level. Micro, micro level as well, like pretty difficult economical situations. And we’re talking about that. It’s just character because he was saying that how he started property in a place that was highly regulated and I was, was telling him not to do it and he was like, no, I’m gonna do it ’cause it’s gonna be great. He’s like, yeah, we’re talking about that. It’s like, we come from a hard background like this. And it is not that, that that, that I grew up like poor or anything. Like, I don’t wanna say that, but it’s just a different country to do a different, difficult country to do things, to make things happen where there’s always a stop, uh, uh, a barrier to everything that you wanna do. So you learn how to navigate those things. And that’s why when everybody right now is super worried about. The economy was happening and all this, and we were joking with this, guys like, listen, we grew up with this. We know what this is. It’s just people are are scared because things are changing. It’s not, people are not gonna book reservations.
Federico: It’s not, people are not gonna travel. People are waiting to see what’s gonna happen. And for us it’s like, it is, it is common, but for the US it’s like new and it’s scary. But, uh, for us, like we thrive in this environment, honestly. But what I was saying before is like, you know, just to give you some context, like my ability to, I spend there two 10 years and because of inflation, inflation was 110% a year.
Federico: I was making 700 bucks a month. And I had like a, you know, kinda like a, an important, not not supervisor role type of thing, 10 years of seniority. And that was a good salary in Argentina. And when I had to pay $5,000 to the, uh, attorney to help me with the visa because of the, the, the green card, because of this situation that my wife and I live in America, I was like, where did I get this money out of? And just by getting started with the short term rentals, that helped me paid for the attorney. Right. Um, so yeah, you, it was a whole thing. But man, the day I got the, the, the, that I was approved, I literally, I, I couldn’t sleep for days. I was like just going to bed and reme, like talking to myself like my, my mother-in-law’s birthday and this data that the, the facts that may ask me of my marriage, which is real, but I didn’t remember every single detail of my, my wife’s family. And they gave me the approval to jump in the car. I put Living in America by James Brown, blasted in the car, got home, passed out for eight hours. Seriously, I was so stressed. But, uh,
Gil: Yeah, you’re, you’re, probably the best sleep you, the best sleep you had in your life was that day.
Federico: I have no idea. But yeah, so that’s a little bit
Federico: about myself and how I got here, where I’m at today.
Gil: what was the hardest part in the whole entire journey?
Federico: Ah, man, I, I, I, I think there’s certainty, honestly, it shows the, the, the, the, the being afraid of not getting the beast. And all the plants I was building, you know, it’s just falling, falling apart because it’s like, okay, we have a goal, we know what we need to do, and I wanna do it the right way, you know? And people were like, oh, you can fly there and then do an
Federico: adjustment. I don’t wanna do that. I wanna do it the right way. And for that, I had to be patient, which I’m not a patient person, high DHD, you know, I want things now. I want things fast. And this two years, two years of waiting, you know, it was extremely challenging. Leaving my nine to five. My, my daughter was really challenging because I had a, an amazing relationship. I was building a career even though I didn’t have the chance to move to, to, to the us. so there are a lot of like, you know, leap of faiths and trust in the process and trusting myself and having incredible support of my wife and, and my family and their family and our friends to say, yeah, you go, you get it, you know, we know that we trust in you and you’re gonna do it.
Federico: So.
Gil: Yeah, it’s uh, it’s a lot of like corollaries with like just even starting a business in entrepreneurship as well too. Like the thing that I’ve learned, this is my first time being the founder of a company and the experiences before these were like. Six other startups, but I didn’t have, I didn’t own that responsibility of all the employees un under me.
Gil: And where if the company went south, I can find another job. Like with this, it’s very different because you have so many people that rely on you that the weight is just so much more. when what you said about like the uncertainty, like I think of like on, honestly, when we take these big leaps, it’s that it’s really not the task and the things that you need to execute on that are the all, all the hard parts.
Gil: It’s really trying to mentally get through it all. That to me is probably the most challenging of, of like being an entrepreneur.
Federico: Uh, 100% is like that, the burden. And then especially when di Dinner, real estate, something I always tell to my team and even to my clients, I, I, I repeat this all the time, just to keep it, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like, um, part of our, so my mission statement, you know, is like to, to provide a peace of mind to my, to the owners and affect their state to my clients, so to my guests.
Federico: But that comes from a deeper philosophy that I have, which is we are dealing with two clients, right? Uh, doing property mansion and dealing with, again, the homeowner and the guest. Both of them are trusting with us. Some of the most valuable things because a homeowner is trusting you with a house, and normally a house is tends to be one of the most expensive things you buy in your lifetime on unless you buy like a project or something like that. Right. Uh, many times it’s like their life investment is there, you know, retirement is, or you know, kids, uh, in heritage or something like that. And then people staying on your property, they’re trusting you with your time and you cannot give bad time. That’s, that’s one thing that you know, is actually, I believe is the most thing anyone has, is time. you know, it’s a huge responsibility that we have. So when someone’s not having a good time where we are messing up, you know, we mess up sometimes, even though we try not to. It’s just part of doing business, especially in the travel industry where there’s so many disruptions and things outta your control, you know, it’s just like, it’s a big responsibility.
Federico: It’s like. It is, uh, you gotta mentally prepare for that when you’re dealing, and I’m, and I know this, I’m not dealing with lives or I’m not a doctor. I know they have higher responsibility, but still I feel it’s a big responsibility that we have to live up to expectations and, and protecting people’s time and people’s properties.
Federico: So I,
Gil: Yeah. I love that. I love the, the framing that you have and the, kinda like how you distill this back to your team there. Um, so you have. Lemme see if I got this right. You’re managing 75 properties. You have boutique hotel with five doors. You’re starting a bar. Did I say, did I
Federico: yeah. I’m opening a borrow there. So, yeah, I’m managing, I have my, the map back here, so we have like properties in like 16 different states. Uh, I have pretty, you know, like organic growth, just word of mouth and referrals and people from Instagram and the car walls. Andia, I’ve been referring people and clients happy with my services. So that’s just been, you know, growing properties and people like reach out and if the property checks the boxes of being a nice property and a good client willing to, you know, listen to my suggestions on how to make this place good or improve, we want to improve or what to do on the price and all of that. We’ve been taking them, now we’re focusing on a little bit more in New York, Michigan, and Colorado, and maybe looking on the markets, markets. But still, if I have someone from like our online community that needs help and they want management, I jump in. Um, but yeah. And then we in, in absent New York with Kellar and Maddie and they, we’ve been doing this, um, projects where we find properties, um, and Sarah raises capital and then Scalam Maddie, they do the whole, um, purchase, renovation design and then they hand it over for me to manage.
Federico: I have a piece of equity in those properties, so it’s incredible as well. And in all the process we just acquire. Um, I launched a couple months ago. It’s a five bedroom inn here in Ho New York, which is in the Catskills. Uh, it’s called the Book Village in, because it’s the book village, uh, where the ho is like, uh, there are a bunch of, uh, bookstores, uh, and it has a bar, restaurant.
Federico: And I always been passionate about food, especially trying so much. I, you know, love Anthony Bourdain, read all his books. And growing up since I was little, I was always passionate about food. Like my father’s family loved eating and going out, and I was like, you know, my, my grandpa, my, my grandfather was like, super excited.
Federico: I would eat like snails and frogs and all that when I was like five. So I just grew up around food and loving food and, and trolling and going, you know, and it’s like, okay, this is a stress in opening our restaurants. Like, you know, they tend to fail pretty quickly, but I know how to feel people nice. I know how to do business and I put all my passion and hard work into things.
Federico: So yeah, aiming to launch somewhere in the summer. Um, it’s, it is 10 minutes from where I live, so. It’s, it’s gonna be fun.
Gil: Yeah. So you, you have, you have a pretty full plate now. Like what’s your, you’ve already gone through some pretty big transformations now. Like what are you excited about? Like what do you want to accomplish? Um, what’s that big dream that you have?
Federico: Oh, man. You know, it, it’s funny because, uh, today I, I, I told you, I don’t remember if we took all this in in the book, but I said, I’ve bought this, uh, 91 Jeep, um, on Monday. Um, because they, they got one. I was like, you need to get one. And you know, everybody, it’s like, we’re a gang now. Um, and I went to a hotel, uh, and I park it there.
Federico: I took a photo. I look at it, it’s like I’m living a beautiful place. I have this project, I have fun car, which is all right. It’s like, it’s rusty old, but it’s, uh, you know, it’s just a convertible. I always want to have a convertible to, uh, drive around. It’s like, uh. I’m so happy right now. It’s like, okay, but still I know I wanna grow.
Federico: So kinda like my goals is to, to continue building this in a way that I can keep supporting, um, you know, my team. Um, which I, I’m a little bit burnt out of that, so I’m bringing someone into my management company to help me with dealing with the team and that the business can run itself without me being involved in like, all the nitty gritty, which I’ve been working towards that for a long time.
Federico: And, you know, we’re making steps, but there’s still things that need to be involved. Uh, but while making sure that we don’t decrease the quality of work, we don’t decrease, you know, the, the client’s perspective of what we do and, and that we continue being successful. I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to say one day, okay, this run automatically, uh, on autopilot and stepping out and then it falls apart. So I’m always gonna be somehow involved, but I want to have, like, again, my management company, now we’re doing revenue management services as another business, the bar, um. And then, yeah, it’s just investing in some properties. Like that’s something I started doing when I moved here. Uh, we have two properties in Texas, the one that I’m at right now that we bought as a primary home. Um, but I want to start at some point pour in time on, on capital into my own projects because I also like really enjoy doing that. But I don’t have the time to really go and working a whole house right now by myself.
Gil: Yeah. It, it, it, you, you mentioned a lot of like that, that I really love is your, it seems like your ambitions are not necessarily like, oh, we now have 75 drawers, let’s get to two 50 and like that big door count that I think like a lot of, a lot of folks in the industry was talking about pretty big in the last two years and now kind of like that actually has shifted where it’s actually not about more doors.
Gil: It’s really about like figuring out like what the right balance of life is and, um.
Federico: of properties as well. I can get a hun I can get 200, $300 if they make 15 to 30,000 a year. I don’t wanna do that.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you also mentioned like bringing other people into your team where you get to be able to like pull yourself back a little bit and reevaluate and it like, I don’t know, our listeners here with, if you’re part of the STR book club and, and the book that we’re reading right now, which is like, buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell.
Gil: Um, like that’s a big thing about like what he preaches is really like, it’s not necessarily always about growth, growth, growth, but like what the real wealth is, is if you’re able to step out from your business and be able to still run your business is still autonomously able to grow and you’re able to spend your time on other things.
Gil: That’s actually what I hear more often now, which makes me feel really good where there is this sustainable growth happening within the industry.
Federico: Yeah. And, and, you know, it’s, it’s also a character because for me it’s hard, like, because I’m always in the growth mindset of everything that I do. I like to grind out, like to go deep in everything that I do. Um, but I remember last year there was a point, again, this company is gonna be two years in August. So sometime last year I was like, you know, working, I remember I was like handling like a lot of, putting off a lot of fires. I’m pretty stress and everything. It’s like, what are you like trying to achieve here? Right? It’s like, okay, what, what is the goal? What is the end game here? Right? And then I put a number, I say, okay, definitely I want to, you know, hit the million dollars.
Federico: That’s something that a lot to do be in America. Got a million dollars in, in revenue. Perfect. Um, and then I said that, that, you know, that, okay, let’s break it down. What does it mean in properties? Does it mean in team? What does it mean? This, this and that? And we’re working towards that. I mean, I think we’re in a good path and we’re gonna get there at some point. Not too far. Um, because we have pretty successful first year and second year coming pretty well. Um. And yeah. And that, that gave me perspective on that. At the end of the day, yeah. It’s just like, you know, making sure that I’m building something I enjoy and, you know, slowly prioritizing. ’cause I haven’t prioritized myself and, you know, my wife and, and my lifestyle for a while because I, I feel like my twenties to thirties, I spent that time.
Federico: I was working at the airlines, at the airline, airline industry. I was trolling off for work and then I had my free tickets. I was like, I flew over a million miles. I was like, maxing my credit card, I’m flying, I’m trolling and doing all that. And then I moved from that to, I don’t wanna be broke, I want to grind, I wanna do all this.
Federico: And there was a lot of, you know, mental and physical, uh, effort into moving here, starting this business and doing that. And I just, you know, I just wanna have a simple life. I just want to have fun. I wanna be, you know, be comfortable not having to worry about money and make it to the end of the month and growing what I have and making sure that things I haven’t fall apart and enjoy the process.
Federico: And that’s kind of like the mindset I’m trying to build right now.
Federico: But it So this sounds like a, it’s a, there’s a shift towards balance now that’s happening within your life.
Federico: yeah. Yeah, because I know, and it’s, and I have a, it’s funny, you know, how, how you have like certain wake, wake up calls. Um, I was like scrolling out. I, I, you know, I like to, to to hear all these people like guy break up Peter RT under hormonal, these like health guys. Um, I, I think they have some interesting things to say and I think it was, was saying, you know, oh, BO two max is like number one, um, longevity marker that you can track to know if you’re gonna live a long life. Um, I got an Apple watch a couple months ago and I look at it and oh, it tracks Bo two max. Let’s see how it is. Oh, it’s below average. It’s like, crap, that’s not good. Like, and that’s a really bad thing. And I say, okay, I need to get healthy and need to start investing in myself. And I started investing like, you know, into building in my basement.
Federico: I got a, a little chip sauna and coal punch and exercising and. Um, eating healthy and I did a few blood works and all of that, and I realized, okay, I can do better. I, I, it’s crazy. I lost, like, literally, I, I didn’t tell everybody. I lost like 15 pounds in the last three weeks, so I’m feeling well. Right. Just like using JG pt. Uh, I know we’re talking about AI before, it’s like I just put all my blood works and everything and the people that I follow and it’s like, yeah, build me a plan for everything I need to do. It’s working out. I mean, I’m feeling great. I’m feeling energized and I feeling, uh, and I’m losing weight and I’m feeling super well, so it’s pretty crazy.
Gil: I, I was gonna, like, we, hey, we chat about this a little bit before, be before our call there, and I wanted to, to, to just tease out kind of the things that you’re doing, but like, talk to me a little bit about that. So you, you lost, lemme see if I got this right. 15 pounds in, was it two weeks?
Federico: Yeah. Three weeks still. Three weeks I think.
Gil: That’s amazing.
Gil: That’s amazing. And, and you, so you’re putting your blood work into chatt pd, like what is, what are you prompting you? Like what are you, what are you feeding in and what is it telling you?
Federico: Yeah, so what I did is I put, I, I, I put my regular blood, blood work that the other day and then, uh, I did a genetic study that Breaker has, that tells you about your genetic, you know, the methylation stuff. And I put both of them in G GT and I say, okay, these are my, my, uh, blood works. This is how I feel right now.
Federico: And this is like my, I know weight, height and all that. This is what I wanna achieve. I wanna, you know, live longer. I wanna, um, feel energized, um, you know, couple things more and I want to clean. Um, and then, um, I put it, you know, I create a project in t how you can do the folder and you can give some instructions and say, I want you to create protocols based on the people that I follow, and these are the people that I follow. And it just spit out like this whole plan. And I keep asking questions and I just go to a supermarket and I take photos of the shelves and tells me what to, I want not to buy. Right, because I put, like, I wanna do, I’m doing a keto diet, I’m avoiding, uh, seed oils. I’m doing all of this. I just tell me, oh, don’t buy that because it has seed oils.
Federico: Don’t buy this because it’s like, whatever. Um, buy this because it, you know, the reason why, um, and I’ve just been pulling up GGBT, I’m taking photos and, or maybe taking photos from my fridge. Hey, what can I eat tonight That is get with the things I have in my fridge, coming up with a few recipes. So it’s pretty wild.
Federico: I mean, I, I I, I’ve been going deep into JA GBT for a couple months, and now I think, how do I, how did I live with, without this for all my life, right? Um, so
Federico: it’s
Gil: I, I, so I, I, I see like a lot of different use cases for, for chat 2:00 PM even like different ways to approach working with ai. And in the very beginning it was a very like, oh, I give you this, or I have this question, help me answer it or help create me this thing. And that was like a pretty big trend of how people were using chat g, pt, and myself included.
Gil: And more recently, I. I’ve been meeting folks that are using it to provide a lot of content and context around their life, and those are actually the folks that are really gaining a lot of benefit because what I found is that when you’re collaborating with Jet GBD or any other AI model out there, then it’s able to give you very tailored instructions on how to treat you or how to, how to help you on these things.
Gil: But when you are pretty open-ended of like, oh, I want to be able to create a blog post that talks about these things, like, yeah, you’re gonna, you, you, you will get the output. Um, but it’s a pretty crummy output in most cases there.
Federico: Yeah. And I heard a lot of people complaining, Hey, my job is working worse and worse and mine is better and better. But it’s like, okay, pay the $20 a month. It’s the best investment you’re gonna do. It’s cheaper than a personal assistant. And again, you can track so many things. And I saw prompt the other day in, in X.
Federico: That is said something like. Some prompts are gonna blow your mind, right? Or something like that. Those kinda like titles. But it was pretty good because it said Ask JGBT now that you have so much of my data, tell me what are my five main blind spots. It, it gave me the chills because it was like, so spot on.
Federico: It was like, I, one of the things I said, and what I’m working on is you implement too fast and your team struggles to catch up with your changes. Like that’s totally what was, that’s exactly what I need to hear. That’s exactly the struggle I had in the business and constantly changing things. I don’t, giving the time to my team to adapt to the new processes, systems and stuff like that. That was while, and I, I’ll find the exact problem, I’ll send it to you.
Federico: But,
Gil: please do.
Federico: that was great. And then things I’ve been doing, for example, also really good for the business is like, um, for the team, for example, like getting the predictive index, um, personal evaluation and then I understand, okay, what, what does each one of my team members thrive? On, what are they good at? And then splitting my process into, okay, this part of the process is done by this person who thrives on this because of their, uh, predictive index. And then if I’m trying to hire someone first, I explain what I need to do, builds the, um, job posting and job requirements, and then tells me what type of personality test, like, profile I need to find. Um, so those type of things have been incredible. Um, but yeah, I, I’ve been using just g bt like even for buying this Jeep I was talking about. It’s like I, I was putting every Jeep that I found in marketplace and telling me what was good, what was bad, how it was the process of like transferring the title.
Federico: You know, a lot of things that you know how to navigate. Even opening the bar right now, it’s like, Hey, how do I get the liker license? Um, you know, super stressful, difficult thing to do and it’s giving you every single step on how to do it. But you need to pay the $20, build these projects and put all the contacts in there.
Federico: And then, you know, I’ve been building my custom chip, for example, to okay, review removal, like teach you how to do review removal following Sean video on YouTube. Now, whenever I ask you to remove a review, ask me for the, um, conversation, the guest review and the photos and this and that, and now my team can open that and say, okay, I need to remove this review.
Federico: How do I do it? It’s gonna ask all the questions. Right? Um, there’s so much that you can do. I mean, it’s, it’s oppressive.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I think like one of the trends I I, I, I hear what you’re saying is almost like that as an entrepreneur again, or just like, just embarking on new paths, what TB does is that it opens the door for knowledge where this anxiety of doing something new is gone.
Gil: You don’t necessarily need the full on expert, but you know, you need to have someone that is able to help you get to like the next few steps.
Gil: And like chat gpt is actually really good at just helping you provide and like, open up your windows, like, did you know about these things? And you can ask it questions about like, what have I forgotten? And you never have to feel like, oh, a lot of people are like, I will never open a bar because I don’t know how to get my liquor license.
Gil: Like, and who would I go to to fi figure this out? I’m, I don’t want to call the city on, on how to do this,
Federico: And, and yeah, the, the one thing for me is, uh, is that, that that’s telling you, you know, this, this is phrase, I’d love this. You don’t know what you don’t know, but J GT’s kinda like giving you that because if you go to Google, you can Google, but you only Google what you know. Right? It’s this bias of, you know, the only information you have on, you can ask about the information you have, but J GBT is gonna give you the whole context and give you extra information, you know, all the next steps.
Federico: I actually talked to my team the other day and say, Hey guys, have you been using J GT lately? Yes. Do you know how, when you ask for example, Hey, I’m visiting a city, tell me about things to do. Yeah. And it gives you all of this and tells you, do you want me to build a plan day by day? Yeah. Okay. We, that’s the philosophy we to use with our guests.
Federico: Like if they’re asking us for something, we need to follow up with a question, right? And I, I’m using host ai, for example, nice called Condi, which I don’t use in, out, um, I using copilot or autopilot, which means I helps my team to find information quickly about the properties. I don’t wanna replace my team with ai.
Federico: I feel that it’s important to keep the human touch, at least for now. Um, but I don’t wanna lose that. Uh, but the, the, the, the, the cool thing is that it brings, you know, all the, like, it is the proper information that have loaded and it helps like quickly, like where’s the pack and play, for example. But, uh, I told him it’s like, I don’t wanna replace my team with ai.
Federico: What I want is give you the superpower of combining AI with the human touch so you feel elevated, you feel you’re faster. You, you feel you, you can resolve easier. And I feel that’s the way we’re heading at. At some point, I hope it doesn’t become everything ai. I really hope there is this plan of the human part with the support of AI to do things faster, efficiently, as anything technology did. I just know that, that the capabilities of AI are crazier and crazier, so, uh, I would hate to see AI replacing people in a lot of things, but I know that in some industries may be happening.
Gil: Yeah. What are you, uh, in the AI world there? What are you most interested in learning more about? Are there like things that, like notebook, lm or like any of these, like technologies or tactics or prompt engineering or like any, like those types of things that you’re like, Ooh, I wish I had time to focus on that and like, learn more about that.
Federico: Yeah, I have, I had to, I’m open right now. I’ve been trying to build some, like agents and stuff like that for different tools. What I’ll love to do is like kinda like build in certain. Agents that will analyze things, given my parameters on revenue management, listing optimization, those type of things. And then maintainance, like fitting into to like a maintenance issue and explaining pretty well how to handle it, uh, how to troubleshoot it, which is not that difficult. I just need to find the time to do it myself and putting all the prompts. But, um, yeah, um, I, I, I think, you know, I been, uh, I’m passionate about revenue management and I love to analyze the data because I feel revenue management, even though I really bad with math, I always hated math.
Federico: Like it was my worst. Like, you know, um, um, the worst assignment in school for me was math. Like I, I, I hated it, but revenue management, in my opinion, it’s like marketing and human psychology, right? Uh, selling. And it’s like a puzzle. It’s like a big puzzle. So I wanna find a way to grab all the data and the ideas that I have and find a way to say, okay, how we can analyze and see the holes into. The things that we analyze. Again, there’s some blind spots. How we can find those blind points. What are the things that we’re missing? What are the things, you know, gimme trends that, uh, I don’t think any dynamic pricing tools giving you right now. It’s like, tell me what is, where are my weakest days? Um, you know, tell me what is the sweet spot for certain so we can pricing, uh, based on the booking window. Um, another thing I would love to learn and find a way of how to do that, if I can do that with AI or how I can do that, is how people are finding our properties when they book, right? Because yeah, you can ask around, but it’s, it’s, I’m super intrigued because I, I might, so many properties are remote, they’re rural that I know you’re not searching for my town.
Federico: I know a hundred percent you’re not searching for my talent. I wanna know why you’re searching, to see how I can optimize that. How can I make sure that, you know, my listing is, is tailored to attract the people that are searching the way that you’re searching? Which I don’t know what, what way it is. Um, but yeah, there are a lot of things that, uh, I would love to do.
Gil: Yeah, I, I think like what you’re pointing to is like using AI to actually not just get output, but to learn as well too. And that’s one of the things that like I’ve started to shift towards, it’s like actually using AI as almost like a teacher to teach me new skills that I wish I had someone that could tap on the shoulder and annoy anytime I really want.
Gil: And like in your case, for instance, like if you’re, you have properties in small towns that you’re trying to attract other people that might be in the vicinity or in another metro area and nearby, like how do you actually reach them? Like, that’s actually a great conversation with, with chat GPT or any other AI agent where you’re saying.
Gil: Hey, I have a property in here. My travelers are coming from these different areas. I want to be able to figure out how I can reach them. And I, I think maybe I should be investing into SEO or maybe targeted as, and like you give it some hints on like some of the things that you’re thinking about. And then you prompted to say like, okay, what have I not thought of?
Gil: How should I approach this and how should I break this problem down? And when you say like, how do I break this problem down? Like that’s actually a very powerful way to end a prompt. Because what it’s gonna do is it’s gonna try to figure out like, okay, these are the goals that you have. These are the things that you know about.
Gil: And really scan its network to figure out like, okay, how would others approach it? Um, and you get expert level advice by doing something like that.
Federico: Yeah. And I’m gonna do two more things on how I use JGT and ai. Number one is like I do a lot of automations. I love like, I’m really bad, like, I don’t know, coding and everything like that. I just did the hello word one day and that’s it. And it’s the HT and ml. But, uh, I love creating like automations and workflows and stuff like that.
Federico: I’ve been doing like likes PR and, and processes and I use Notion, my notion is like a super power Nestor notion type of thing where I send all my booking data from host way to Notion and we do all lot project management and CRM in notion and just green formulas and stuff like that. I just dump it in, in and then you guide it and what, what I need to, to achieve and the things I built in the last two months is like, I’m so proud of looking at it.
Federico: Like, you know, it’s just making my team’s life easier.
Federico: Trying
Gil: What’s an example?
Gil: Gimme, gimme a hard example on that one.
Federico: lemme think, I mean, I have so many examples, but, uh, I. Lemme think one that, that, that I recently did. I’m just pulling up my, my, uh, notion. Um, and can I look, okay, so lemme give you an example with claims, right? So we open a claim and then I have, um, a formula that I built with Cha g PT on give the exact deadline to submit the claim before the peer, uh, closes in case the guest didn’t review us.
Federico: So we’re trying, it’s automatically giving us a calm down and telling us, okay, we have, you still have three days, you have two days now, uh, you know, in red you have five hours and stuff like that. And then automation send us an email if something’s about to expire. Um, then I have host AI automatically. The texts when there’s like maintenance issues, uh, supplies and stuff like that, creates a task. Then it sh uh, I shoot it to Notion via s and we have an inbox of problems and then we decide what to build if we need to do a maintenance ticket or an action item, which is like project management based on that. Um, I just been, you know, building stuff like that all the time. Or like the bookings, for example, Ida Built. Um, we had the booking data coming through the webhook with Host Away, and now I build a way where they can click from the booking to jump into the guest reservation from, uh, notion to host away without having to go and search for a guest’s name. You know, it’s just kind of like what I’m trying to do all the time is reduce the number of clicks that my team has to do to do something so they can focus on the problem and not in working the problem. Like not, not creating that like document their problem, but actually resolving the problem better set.
Gil: So, so did, did I catch that correctly that you have your booking data feed into Host Away and, and be able to reconcile what are you doing in Host Away in particular for that specific booking?
Federico: Sorry, uh, from hostel to Notion, so hostel is my PMS
Federico: and it’s sent to Notion. And what I do is, for example, is like, again, we have a lot of properties in different places, right? So I have a lot of like daily tasks. So daily tasks that we have, for example, checking preparation. And I have one person that pulls the reservations for today because our filter and their notion and they start checking every reservation is the access code.
Federico: Okay? Is the number of guests making sense? So I have another automation that basically if the property hosts more than four people and the booking for one people is gonna flag it and show them, Hey, this may be a reservation, you need to reach out because probably it’s gonna be more guests and we need to adjust the number of our guests.
Federico: We check, um, we flag third party. Um, we, we, we flagg like stripe bookings, like direct and BRO to make sure that we verify the payment and make sure that payment is fine. Um, then we do, for example, um, we send, we use turnout and the cleaners get the, their schedule, but we also send a reminder every morning to make sure that they cannot say like, the app didn’t work.
Federico: I didn’t know I had to go. So we have that there so we can see, okay, these are all the checkouts that we have today. We send a reminder to the cleaners. The cleaners arrived, they kind of finished. Um, so we’re basically on top of the operation to make sure that things don’t fall through the cracks. Like this business is something that you can automate a lot, but you need to have the
Federico: human input to make sure that I call ’em like feedback loops or safety nets. And that’s what we do’s, like, we have a lot like the safety nets to make sure that the system that we have automated is running efficiently because sometimes it may happen the cleaner didn’t show out to the property. Yeah. They accepted the schedule. They knew they had to go. They replied to our message that they’re gonna go to clean, and then something happened along the way and they never made it to the property and it happened to us a couple times.
Federico: Right. And that’s a metric that I follow, which is, um, um. No cleans, which is means that, I guess stepping into a property that it hasn’t been cleaned, and that metric has to be zero every quarter. And that’s a non-negotiable with my team. Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s something that, um, by using JT and fitting like my SOPs and all of that, it’s just been helping me to rewrite my SLPs build on these automations and learning about how to do web hooks, learning a little bit about APIs now as well. Um, so that’s been incredibly helpful.
Gil: Okay, so, so if I, if I capture it right, your, your pmms is host away and what you’re doing is you’re pulling all of your booking data into Notion, and the main kind of use case is in notion you have a checklist of items that you want your team to do, or maybe some of these are automated, but you want the team to go through and make sure that these things are checked before someone comes in through the door, so that that quality standard is known when the booking happens.
Federico: Exactly. So we have things for new bookings. We have things for the, you know, the operation day, our cleanings, checkouts, claims, maintenance, um, you know, pets. We have, um, task above, um, lost and found. Um, you know, pontoons, we run pontoons in a few properties. So, um, yeah, I mean we have a lot of tasks here during the day to make sure that things flow. Um, so when someone tells me, I don’t know if I need to hire a VA because I dunno if I’m gonna have things to give them, it’s like, you definitely do because you’re doing a lot of things during the day. It’s just like structure that in a checklist, like goes along with the buy back your time. Uh, book is exactly that.
Federico: It’s like you need to write down everything you’re doing during the day and then structure in a way that you can assign to someone for things that you don’t want to do or you’re not good at doing, or they are low paying type of like tasks.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Last month, uh, book. I didn’t finish it all the way admittedly, but it was like the checklist manifesto. I’m sure. I’m sure you ate that one up.
Federico: That was great. Yeah, we were talking about that one the other day and that was super interesting. So yeah, man, again, learning a lot with, with AI and how to, to build processes and, and give my team a superpower. That’s the way that I see it.
Gil: Yeah. Um, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, um, and then chat about, uh, direct bookings there. Talk to me a little bit about some of the tactics that you, you deploy at your, your management company, your.
Federico: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s something I really want to grow direct bookings is we’ve been growing of course. Um, I’ll say my number one concern was always being the merchant record with direct bookings. I was always afraid of, you know, being liable for payments. Um, and, you know, we are gonna hospitality, not processing payments. So I used to use Hospitable. I love Hospitable and it was great. And they have their, their merchant record process, kinda like Airbnb where you know you have their booking and they charge the card and they’re liable for that. And then I moved to Host away in November last year because I became a Marriot partner, like I’m listed in Marriott and I had to move to another PMS and or their booking website now is through Stripe, right?
Federico: And also VRBO is through Stripe and I was pretty concerned about that. So what we did is building these systems. I mentioned like, you know, checking third party, anything that goes through Stripe. We check the form of payment in this daily task and make sure that the name matches a reservation and it matches a identification and picture that is submitting Happy Guest, which we use for rental agreement and, and identity, identity verification.
Federico: So if you haven’t used Happy Guest, everybody go talk to Keenan or my Mike. Tell them I send you. I love them. They’re amazing. Love they’re building. I love them both. Um, but yeah, so we build this process. Uh, now that I feel more comfortable, I also onboard a count, which don’t really need to do. I, I don’t think, I dunno if it’s worth it, but just gimme a peace of mind when I go to to bed, which is an Equifax company that verifies and gimme early alerts for potential charge packs. Or if I have a chargeback, they help you with a dispute. So I build my tech stack and my process. I think that was the thing I was scared about. It was something that was unknown for me. And again, with LGBT, I explained here I’m gonna start being merchant record. What do I need to, to protect myself is just account and this processes and how to, to check everything. And, and along the process with their bookings, we just started like, um, okay, putting signs in the properties for people to book again, again. And then we, we started implementing a few properties, um, stay, fight to collect guest, uh, emails. Now we collect also through Happy Guest and we. Every week. My, my personal assistant, she sends all of the bo the, the emails after food, during the bad guests to Anna.
Federico: Anna is, uh, Anna Stern is my, my marketing person. She, she built a, a, um, children rental marketing business. Um, I think it was one of her first customers. I told her, use, use them as a Guinea pig. Uh, big try, try whatever you want. And we started email campaigns and we started like reaching out to, you know, at the moment, checkout and then campaigns about new properties that we launch, um, promotions.
Federico: Like, like she’ll reach out and say, Hey guys, what property slow this month so we can bump it into the emails, um, or what new properties you have. Um, and yeah, and those, those been really good. I mean, we see people coming back or seeing this, these promotions. And then I have a few more things in mind that I can talk, talk about, uh, on things I wanna start implementing.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I am, I am interested just a little bit, if you can tease us a little bit of all like. Some of the things that you wanna learn more about and that, that you’re thinking about and deploying. It sounds like you’re, you have a pretty solid foundation, and I share this with a lot of our listeners here, is like, your email is probably like the lowest hanging fruit that you should be doing as any host.
Gil: And there’s many ways, and it sounds like you actually have two ways of collecting emails, maybe even third if you have a rental agreement as well too. But you have many ways of collecting emails and that’s actually one of the best ways to start to create a relationship between you and the guest there.
Gil: And so the guest doesn’t think of it like, oh, I’m staying at Airbnb. No, I’m staying at x, y, z property management company. I’m, I’m staying at Blackbird Hospitality, wherever it is. And they know it’s you. They, they have, they start to have a relationship with you when they start to think about where they travel.
Gil: They think about you, but you only get that opportunity if you create that relationship
Federico: Mm-hmm.
Gil: And emails like, again, one of the best, best ways of doing it. So I’m interested in hearing like. You have those emails. It sounds like you already have a marketing engine specifically around building these campaigns out there.
Gil: What’s, what’s one of the, what’s one of the, the big unlocks or what you’re, what, what are you excited about?
Federico: So then things I wanna do, um, I wanna start working a little bit more with the revenue management, applying to direct bookings. Uh, so a couple of things I have in my, uh, um, you know, things to do is, uh, and start offering certain promotions and discounts for direct bookings in a very strategic way. Uh, something I noticed, uh, a couple of weeks ago, I was looking to, to stay in New York City for a day and I was looking through some of the websites from the hotels and like, book two nights and get a third night for free or stuff like that. Uh, and you know, you can build those things by identifying, okay, if I’m letting someone book in three days, it’s better than nothing and I’m still paying, you know, the premium days probably because I’m gonna book like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the fourth day they’re gonna offer, it’s gonna be probably Wednesday or Tuesday. And that’s the less popular day in your calendar, which probably if you go out and you guys, everybody open your calendars. Tell me, Wednesday, Tuesdays are the opposite day to your weekends. Less popular days unless you’re in a business kinda like market, like business travelers, um, offering things like that.
Federico: Like, hey, book three nights, get the fourth for free. Um, and then, uh, I, I, I heard, um, Mike, uh, surgeon the other day, uh. I was
Gil: Make sure again,
Federico: showing, yeah. Saying about, you know, putting a QR code, a 10% discount immediately in the property and they can book immediately. I wanna do that. Uh, I have like some signs, but, uh, I don’t have like a, like a strong offer.
Federico: Like, okay, scan the QR code, I’m gonna get 10%. Love the idea. So I’m printing this, this signs now and start taking, shipping it to the properties. Um, and I’m thinking that also, what are the things I can add into the properties? Like, you know, maybe some, something that people can take home and then have the branding just for them to say, okay, this is
Federico: fun.
Federico: Like a kitchen or something that they remember a brand, which I know some people are, were far advancing in the game on this. Uh, but yeah, it’s just something that takes implementation. It’s an investment. But I feel that, you know, with all the changes going with the OTAs, you would definitely wanna have control of your business. And that was kinda like my mindset shift of saying, yeah, we had a few situations with the OTAs, uh, and I wanna put names right, and I’m not breaking any terms of services.
Federico: I wanna leave that in, in on record, just in case because they’re being very aggressive lately. Um, I had a few situations where people, you know, they were citing with, with the guests in situations where the guests were write, it’s hard to remove reviews that punishing for everything I say, okay. Even though I relied on this OTS to grow my business and they were amazing and they were simple to use, I understand.
Federico: I identify that to have a a, a healthy long-term business. Sustainable all time. I have to have control of my bookings on my traffic and my properties. And if something happens, because we had a property being the listed pre, uh, and fairly in my opinion, I was able to get it back up after like three months of challenging with with, with the OTA. Um, in the meantime we got a few direct bookings and, uh, other platforms I haven’t used before, like booking.com. And that was good because, you know, you get the list of the, one of the big platforms, it’s like, is at that sentence for a lot of people.
Federico: It’s like you lost your investment, like everything’s gone.
Federico: And by building this we were able to, oh look, we’re getting Google vacation rental bookings, we’re getting direct bookings. And of course we were not making as much as before, but we still kept some revenue coming until we figure out the situation. And if I would’ve been, had a stronger process for the direct bookings and stuff like that, I would’ve been in a better position.
Federico: And that’s kinda like the goal where, where I’m, where I’m gonna, I want to get. In case again, one day the LTAs changed their terms of services and were at fault, and they say, oh, you’re gonna rent anymore this property?
Gil: Yeah. And it, it’s, it’s funny, I I I felt it under your kind of your breath there where you’re like, I wanna put this on record. I’m not breaking Ts and Cs and, and, and such is like, and I think what you’re, what you’re signaling here is like, this is like, and this is not just you, but the entire industry is scared of the major OTA because of just how much power they have overall business.
Gil: And I think that’s why a lot of folks are now investing into direct bookings is because like, oh, they feel like. They almost lack lost control. Like in the very beginning it was help, and it’s gotten to a point where you’re on like a choke hold and they are, they have control over how your listings are.
Gil: And it sounded like you were, three months is actually a very long time for not being able to get any revenues for three months. That’s a long time. But I think the, the nice that comes out of it is like you’re experimenting with different things and had that not happened, you wouldn’t have actually experimented or maybe not as aggressively and invest into it.
Gil: The thing that I find that is, is that when you invest into direct bookings, it’s very different than investing into, I’ll just say Airbnb, it’s on, when you’re on an OTA and you’re trying to get bookings, it’s very transactional. You’re trying to get that next transaction, you’re trying gonna get that next booking.
Gil: When you’re dropping rates, you’re getting that next transaction there. It’s very, very transactional based. But the, the big difference between that and spending time on your direct bookings is that direct bookings is. Compounding the things that you do compounds over each other. So every month when you’re growing your social media, you’re growing your following.
Gil: That compounds. If you do nothing else, it still continues to work. When you have your email marketing campaign and you have all your campaigns all scheduled out, your sequences, alls cetera, you put that time in there, it works on its own. That email list grows over time. So these are the things that like, it actually compounds over each other.
Gil: And I, I, I, I, I see this over and over again where people try to do direct bookings and they’ll try it out for six, eight months and they’re like, I only got like two bookings out of it. And they feel like they didn’t get that momentum. But I was talking to a friend the other day and he talks to me about this analogy, and he was applying it to an entrepreneurship, but it also applies here, but like how a bamboo shoot actually grows in the first year when you’re growing a bamboo shoot.
Gil: It looks like nothing’s happening. It looks like it’s wilting. It’s not doing anything. There’s nothing happening. And then on the 18th month or how two years in, it starts to grow and it grows and it grows exponentially. And I, I feel like a lot of times the hosts that do really well in direct bookings, they continue to nurture it as if it was a plant and they continue to let it thrive, and over time they start to see it grow.
Gil: But that first year, it’s a lot of foundations that you’re putting in place and a lot of testing and iterations.
Federico: Man, I, I couldn’t agree more. And, you know, let me, let me pick up on that because that, that’s actually my, my experience and I’m a pretty, again, I’m a pretty impatient person. I, you know, I, I, I, I, I mentioned this again, high A DHD, uh, diagnosed and, you know, recently, but I knew it all my life. And I want things now.
Federico: I want things fast. And then when I lose focus on something, I’m next to the next thing. I forgot all that whole project pretty quickly. And when I, when I look into things, I, we talking about, you know, my process to move to America, it took two years and I had to be patient growing a management company.
Federico: You know, I, I started like a branch of my management company with Emily, a partner, great person in Colorado. And we started the LLC. Six months ago, maybe more, but probably, man, it’s just been eight months or more. And we didn’t have any movement for a long time, but she was building the relationships over there and all of a sudden, hey, four properties. And I told her, it’s like, it’s just you’re planting a seed, you let that, you know, grow and then we harvest and it takes time. And I have people reaching out to me for now revenue management services or management services. I met these people a year ago, two years ago. I helped them get started. I helped them, you know, with something like as answering a question in Instagram.
Federico: And all of a sudden they kept me in and I do it out of, you know, good faith, but they sometimes retire. I say, Hey, I need to manage. And if not, it’s totally fine. But, um, with the direct booking website, it’s the same thing. Now I’m constantly updating my MailChimp plan because I’m hitting the maximum I’m getting.
Federico: It’s like, it’s exciting. And of course, um, what I feel with the direct book is like people again want wanting immediate results. And of course you need to understand your acquisition cost. Uh, again, going back to revenue management and keeping KPIs and metrics, your acquisition cost is how much it costs you to, um, acquire a, a client, a customer, a guest, um, even a property management client.
Federico: Same thing. Now, of course, you do the investment on the property, on the direct booking website. Uh, if you using a professional source, which is what I will suggest, you’re gonna pay for that. And of course, your first guess acquisition cost is gonna be pretty, pretty high. As you start getting more and more bookings, that acquisition costs are gonna become minimal. And now you’re hand control on the, on the business. You’re paying less fees, your guests are getting a better rate, they wanna come back. You have more control on the outcome of situations like disputes, damages, claims, and stuff like that. If you have your systems and your processes in place. Um, and yeah, and it’s just something that grows over time. I, my suggestions for people starting, it’s like. Maybe, you know, unless you have a pretty incredible, unique property, it’s really hard to penetrate, like Google and investing a lot of money in Google, uh, ads and Facebook ads in the beginning. I mean, some people are maybe successful. I feel like your acquisition cost in the beginning is gonna be huge. So try to find a way to use the direct booking website in a strategic way where it’s a way to build your brand, have your guests to recognize you and remember about you and coming back, and then coming back direct. And then as you keep growing, they gonna start booking direct. And then you have all the tools that help you, like Google application rentals based on your direct booking website. So you need to have a direct booking to being on Google. And Google. I mean, haven’t blew up yet, but things gonna be huge because there’s a lot of smart people, a lot of people in other businesses and areas and kind of like, um, you know, um. I, I follow like people on TikTok and on on Twitter and stuff like that.
Federico: I say, Hey, hey, you wanna save $400 in your next, uh, Airbnb stay. Uh, I’m not saying to do that, but Airbnb, but, uh, you, you, you, you find the name of the, of the, of the manager and you search ’em on Google and then you find the property at a lower price. And if you don’t have your dairy booking website and the next property, the second best option has their booking website and they’re gonna save $400, they’re gonna go to the second one, even though you had a nice RP 400 or $400,
Federico: uh, on
Gil: a lot of money.
Federico: So, um, and whatever that that amount is, it’s like, you know, people like to come in, so people like to see that’re getting, they’re getting a deal and those people are searching for deals. So people are, you know, great out the credit card points and all of that. They’re gonna be doing the same thing because they identify a property through what our channel they founded, and they’re gonna find where’s the best place to, to book it at a lower price.
Federico: And I do that with flights. I do that with hotels. I should find where, where can I get the best deal for one thing that I want.
Gil: Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. All right, Federico, we usually end, uh, with, we end the show with three questions. Um, if you’re ready for it. The first question, what’s a, what’s a good book recommendation for us here today? Uh, for, for me and the listeners.
Federico: I’m looking at all my books right now, but I, I, I had to in mind, uh, one that I love is Profit First. I think that book really helped me keeping a healthy business, especially being at the organized person, uh, you know, and always being a mess with my personal finances. Uh, I, after being Profit First, I implemented everything.
Federico: Um, I, it is just, it works. It works a hundred percent. So I highly recommend people that one, and then more towards, you know, inspirational and stuff like that. Shoe Dog by, um, the Nike founder. I read a book, I, the word that book, I loved it. I love the, the story, and I was trying to get a credit card. Through Chase for my business.
Federico: I didn’t have a credit card. And he talks about, you know, how he was like keeping his first shoe company in the Nike Alive by getting loans and negotiating with the bank. He was like, you know, I keep going to the bank and talking and I’ll go to Chase and they’ll be like, no, we’re gonna approve you. And it’s like, but I have everything that you need.
Federico: I know I have everything you need. I’m sure I can get a credit card. And I finished the book, closed it drove to Chase and say, I’m not living here until you gimme a credit card. And I got my credit card. So
Gil: Nice.
Federico: it, it was a, a great book for me. It really helped. Um, so yeah, those two books, I’ll say
Gil: That, that, that sounds like a, a good, uh, I don’t know if it is already, but it, it sounds like a good Netflix series. all right. Second question, what’s, uh, one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new? I feel like you are, you have all the credentials to give really good advice on this one.
Federico: yeah, thank you. And I’ll say. You know, it’s just going back to what we chat. Uh, you know, it’s just being persistent, having a goal, and definitely being patient. Like, you may not see immediate results on things that you do on day one, but if you put the hard work and you keep working towards that goal, and it’s not just something that if it doesn’t work in the first week, you’re gonna drop it. You’re gonna see the results. I always say that the short rental people are extremely resilient. I, the best operators I know have gone through crazy, the craziest things the first month or first year with the property. So that, right, like crazy damages, crazy guests, uh, like, uh, Sarah from the car, she always tells the story that she got a book.com reservation and the entire apartment was stolen.
Federico: Like she stepped into it like it was a Shell Empty Walls apartment, literally everything. Take uh, their first property, first guest in Big Bear, flash Flood. Um, I started managing the week of the snow Magellan in Texas where everything was down and it was crazy. Um, so yeah, don’t let those things bring you down. You’re gonna power through things and yeah, just keep going.
Gil: Awesome. I love that. I love that. Last question, what’s one piece of tactical advice that you would give to someone that’s either starting their direct booking engine or trying to amplify it?
Federico: Yeah, I’ll say build your so peace. Take a moment, play with GGBT and explain what you wanna do. What, what are the things that you’re afraid about? You know, with direct bookings, what are the things that you should be con, you know, careful about, again, of breaching terms of sources, stuff like that. Play with GGBT for an hour, 30 minutes, giving them all the information that you have, all the questions and concerns and how to work around it and build a strong process because I think their book is actually running a real business.
Federico: That’s when it becomes a real business when you are taking control of things. So. Yeah.
Gil: I love that. All right, Fite, where can folks find out more about you? How can they follow along on your ride? Uh, where can they follow you?
Federico: I would say the best place is, uh, STR guide in, in Instagram is where I’m most active. I’m not super active, but uh, that’s the best place I, I need to, to get back to posting. I, I promise I’ll do that, but there’s a lot of great free content I put up there and I hope people can find somebody body.
Gil: Awesome. All right, Fite, it was really good to have you on the show. It’s good to see you again after maybe a month and a half, two months now. Um, but love, love to see. I, I love the growth and kind of like. The persistence that you had through a lot of challenges. Um, so I’m, I’m just thrilled about your progress and I can’t wait to kind of see you grow if that’s not in your portfolio size, even if it’s in how you balance your life and, and, and find more time for yourself.
Gil: I’m, I’m excited to kind of see how your life progress.
Federico: Yeah. No, I love this. Uh, it was a great conversation, so appreciate the, the space.
Gil: Awesome, man. See you next time. Fatty. Right.
Federico: Yeah. Next time.