In this episode of Direct Bookings Simplified, Alex opens up about his journey from facing early challenges in real estate to building a thriving STR business, complete with seven properties, a coaching program, and innovative direct booking strategies. Discover how he uses guest videos, monthly inspections, and smart email marketing to create standout guest experiences and win loyal repeat bookings—all while balancing life as a father of four.
This is an episode packed with refreshing short-term rental perspectives, and heartfelt lessons you’d be interested to learn from
Summary and Highlights
Here are the top takeaways that every host can learn from.
1. Competition in STRs is Fierce—How to Stand Out
Alex highlighted how the landscape for short-term rentals has shifted dramatically. Guests today expect more than just a clean space—they want unique experiences and thoughtful design. He emphasized the importance of market research, working with designers, and creating memorable, Instagram-worthy spaces.
Key Tip: “It’s not about what looks nice to you—it’s about what stands out in the market.”
2. Building Systems for Quality and Guest Experience
Alex shared his approach to operational excellence, including monthly property inspections. Unlike cleaners, who are focused on turnover tasks, inspectors evaluate the overall property condition and ensure readiness for guests. He also creates short instructional videos for common guest issues, like operating appliances or resetting a Wi-Fi router, embedding these into his digital guidebook.
Why It Matters: Small steps like this help reduce last-minute guest inquiries and elevate the overall guest experience.
3. The Power of Keeping Guest Relationships Alive
One of Alex’s early mistakes was failing to maintain contact with past guests. He’s since corrected this by implementing email marketing campaigns and tagging VIP guests for personalized follow-ups.
Practical Advice:
- Use tools like StayFi to collect guest emails via Wi-Fi login.
- Send regular updates and reminders about events or discounts in your area to encourage repeat bookings.
4. Embracing Direct Bookings
Alex’s focus on direct bookings includes using platforms like OwnerRez to automate processes, creating his own direct booking site, and leveraging OTAs strategically. He cleverly integrates his branding into listings to encourage savvy guests to book directly.
Alex’s Favorite Tip: Add your property’s name to listings (e.g., “Stay at Hillside Bungalow”) to make it easy for guests to find you outside the OTA.
5. Giving Back to Your Team and Community
From offering temporary housing to cleaners during natural disasters to paying for tasks just to keep his team employed during slow seasons, Alex shared how he fosters loyalty and supports his staff.
Takeaway: “This is a people business. A simple gesture can build long-lasting relationships with your team.”
Mindset and Advice
Mindset Tip: “You will make mistakes in this business, but persistence pays off. It’s not about avoiding failure but learning from it and growing.”
One Action to Take Today: Start collecting emails from your guests—every single one. Build a communication system that keeps you top-of-mind and encourages repeat bookings.
Follow Alex here ⬇️
Transcription
Gil: Hey folks, welcome back to direct booking simplified. We break down the strategies and tactics to win direct bookings on today’s show. I have Alex W Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex: Hey Gil, thanks for having me on.
Gil: Yeah, it’s uh, it’s good to have you on. It’s been, it’s been a long while since we caught up. I don’t know how many months it’s been, but it’s been, it’s been a little while.
Alex: Yeah, it’s been a while. Uh, just been busy with life, so.
Gil: Yeah, what’s, what’s, what’s going on nowadays with you?
Alex: Um, yeah, so just running the business. Uh, we have our coaching business that we have. We have our short term rentals. Uh, we own seven, we have a fund where we have our hotel, uh, started co hosting. So, um, we have a few units there. Um, hurricane season came through and kind of threw a wrench in our plans, but that’s business. So yeah.
Gil: Yeah. Talk, talk to me a little bit about actually maybe before we do that, do you mind like kind of, kind of giving me, giving folks an introduction to kind of who you are and kind of how you got started in, in, in rentals in the first place?
Alex: Yeah. So, uh, I wish my story was a little bit better than everyone else’s. I think everyone has like a Cinderella story, but I think that wasn’t my case at all. Uh, Alex Sabio, married father of four, live here in Southern California, started investing in real estate probably like 20 years ago with longterm rentals and made almost every single mistake in the book.
In fact, my first ever investment property, I think was a scam and got scammed out of 16 grand. A guy went to jail. It was like a Ponzi scheme pretty much But luckily I just kept going with investing in real estate and just slowly over time Kind of fell into short term rentals during the pandemic, uh 2020 it’s been over four years now, uh, and really grew to love the short term rental industry because Uh, number one just the cash flow the tax benefits appreciation.
I made some good choices there And really enjoyed the whole experience. So, you know, um Hosting guests. So on and so forth.
Gil: Yeah. So you’ve seen, you’ve been, you’ve been hosting in kind of like two areas of, of short term rentals now, like in the heart of the pandemic and afterwards now, like what, what do you see as being like the big differences as like what you observed?
Alex: Competition. The competition’s definitely a lot more stiff. Uh, back in the day, and I say back in the day, I feel like an old dude, and that was four years ago, where anyone was making money, right? You could buy any home, but now everyone’s putting pickleball courts in, like having those crazy coffee makers in, and spending so much money on design.
And that’s probably where we should be, right? Where we’re providing guests an amazing experience other than a hotel. And people going into, like, these mini resorts. Uh, and having this personalized experience, but that’s definitely been the biggest changes, the competition and what you provide for your guests is you have to elevate your game to be able to survive in this business.
Gil: Yeah. Have you had to make any switches as like a result of that where like the assets that you, you purchased in 2020, like you had to like, rethink about how you need to like re amenitize. Yeah,
Alex: I mean, hiring designers or even going out there and just thinking outside of the box and a lot of times it isn’t necessarily about what you think is going to look nice.
It’s more like, Oh, is this going to pop in public? Is this, how is this going to stand out? Really doing the studying, doing market research and what’s in the area and seeing what everyone else is doing and how do you elevate that? So.
Gil: Yeah. Do you have any, uh, stories or examples of like some of the things that some of the lesson learns of what you had to put in practice?
It’s just
Alex: more so. Um, I mean, whenever I go to properties, I tend to like a lot of times I, I I’m very handy. So I’ll go to the property, I’ll set up and then typically that’s three, four days. But this last one I purchased a year ago, we, we definitely spent like over a week there and it’s definitely a lot more planning.
Like you can’t just purchase the same furniture that everyone else is. So you have to kind of plan this out to where, oh, is this furniture available and can it be delivered at this specific time? And is this something that’s going to stand out on top of like, oh, is it going to last long? So on and so forth.
So definitely a lot more planning and just a lot more thought behind designing different properties.
Gil: Yeah, I follow some of your stories and it seems like you still do a lot of the onboarding all, not all, maybe not all, but like a lot yourself too. I do.
Alex: I do. And I don’t know if that’s just my obsession with different things.
And a lot of things that we learn with short term rentals over time is just things don’t go The way you plan. And so a lot of it is how do we, I obsess with how do we, uh, prevent different problems from happening? Or if this problem is going to happen, we know that the air filters are going to go up bad every single year.
Like how many air filters do we put in the property or whatever it is? Right.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing how, like you go through each property and you. You learn, and that’s one more checklist item that you put onto the next one where you’re like, okay, I need to make sure I think about these things. Like more recently, like, and we haven’t done this, we should, I should have done it a lot earlier where we now started putting like little small lock boxes at each one of our properties where we have like extra batteries, extra Roku remotes, screwdrivers.
And like previously we just had those in the closet and the kind of like, let, if we needed to absolutely needed to, we’ll give them access to the closet. But like, that’s actually like. It’s happening so often now that our Roku remotes just like just get lost every so often that like we now have a keypad that like a basically a little lockbox that people can get access to and it’s like it’s helped out on numerous times I’ll just like making sure that People have what they need without having to like give them full rein into all of our linens.
It’s
Alex: funny you say that because that just happened to us last week. And I was creating a story how like, and I was telling my brother because I’m showing him how to set up a short term rental, I said, Oh, this is probably it’s so rare that this happens. But I have a property in Asheville, North Carolina, and the electricity went out and the Wi Fi went out.
And so what I think happens with the Schlage on codes is that it’s constantly trying to communicate with the Wi Fi. So it uses more battery. And so we had a guest show up and he showed up at 1130 at night over there East Coast time, like we’re here in the West Coast. And he told us that the battery wasn’t working and I just so happened to be on my phone and I just so happened like we created a digital guidebook and I sent him like, Hey, can you go over here to this lockbox?
I mean, literally like we solved the problem within like two minutes. Right. So we gave him the lock box and then, uh, he opened up the key and then I told him, like, I even sent them the video where the extra batteries are. And then he went over there. He said, there’s no batteries. And so I had to Instacart him the next day, like the extra batteries.
So,
Gil: yeah. Do you ever do inspections at your places?
Alex: We have, um, so in different areas, uh, business is easier in different areas. Like some places are a bit, a little bit more difficult than others. For example, in the Smokies, I feel like there’s a lot more, um, different providers, and for example, we have one there that they go in once a month and they tour the property and I’m.
That’s probably the person that I keep in contact with the most versus the cleaners the cleaners They kind of just go in and clean the property and then let us know whenever issues are arise And but the thing is, uh, whenever Guests tell us about different things and sometimes there’s high priority things and sometimes there’s Low priority things.
And so, or medium priority things. And so anything that’s not high priority will tell our maintenance people, they walk our properties once a month and they’ll, they’ll go and they’ll fix everything. So,
Gil: yeah, I, that’s what I learned. And I, I haven’t implemented the same in our other markets, but like, I agree with you in the Smokies, we have it in, we call it an inspector.
Um, but she basically walks through each one of our cabins every month and it’s not that expensive. Um, but from a, from a relief, like a stress relief standpoint, it’s made things a whole lot easier because now we’re able to know, like, we are able to like keep a relatively high quality standard and we’re not having to guess.
Like, for instance, like your, your, your scenario of like the batteries, like if we know that every so often. We’re having our inspectors go out there and they’re checking out these lock boxes and they’re checking out all these different things. And we know that there’s batteries there. Like we can confidently say, like, go to this exact place and you’ll have it there.
Um, yeah, which I learned that in the very beginning I was a little bit naive, but I learned that over time that like the cleaners are there to get in and out. Like they’re trying to get the place clean and they’re, they’re in product development. We call it jobs to be done. Their job is to get that place clean.
Their job is not to make sure that. The screws are tightened on the cabinets or that things are well stocked. Um, that’s not their, that’s not their thing. And if you ask them to do those things, they probably will like reluctantly do it or y’all have to ask them a few times. And I was just like, after a while, like just having an inspector in there, it’s just so much easier because the inspector, their job is to make sure that the quality standard is as high as possible.
And you. You have a very reliable system in place. So like, I, I, I definitely think like, as, as you scale up your portfolio or even the first one, like put an inspector in there and have them come every month, it’s not going to cost you that much.
Alex: Dude, I think we have the same person. And it sounds like it.
And yeah, it really, it doesn’t cost that much. Initially she was charging me, she was like really shy to charge me. She said, Oh, I charged 30 a month. I’m like 30. That’s it. Like, can you do like every single one of my properties? So yeah, I mean, she’s, she’s, she’s definitely like, that’s. It’s been a massive game changer and I can’t put that, I can’t emphasize that enough because now I tell people I want my cleaners cleaning and my maintain my maintenance people maintaining and that seemed to be the best formula for us.
Gil: Yeah. I haven’t figured out how to like, so maybe it may or may not be the same person. I’m not definitely, I can’t charge 30 a month, so you might have, you might have like an early bird special or something. But she doesn’t do a lot of the bigger handiwork, uh, where like, I almost wish like every other month I have like a maintenance crew come in just, just to walk the place.
Uh, I probably should schedule that out, but like there’s small stuff that like she, she’ll do and she’ll tidy up. But then like, there’s a lot of these like small little like nuance things that like, Oh, there’s things that need to get replaced or tightened up all around the house, but that’s not thing to do.
She’ll tell you about it, but she won’t do it. So like, I may need to, I may need to figure out, like, can I pair her up with someone or maybe I’ll ask her to bring her husband every other time because her husband does come with her every, every so often too.
Alex: Yeah. It’s interesting. Cause she’ll find, uh, things that I didn’t even know.
She’ll tell me, Oh, you know, three of your TVs weren’t connected to the wifi. Your, your remotes were look really bad. So we swapped out the Roku remotes or something like that. So, um, yeah, once you get good people in your business, then business runs so much smoother. So, uh, I, we, she makes it so easy for us.
And if you guys who are listening, don’t have one, uh, someone that does make a maintenance thing once a month, you need to get one or find someone that does
Gil: that. Yeah. Again, it’s like, it doesn’t cost you that much, but like the, the amount of extra sleep you get from, from, from that, the ROI is like high from a stress perspective.
Right. Right. Right. Um, you mentioned something interesting and I caught this a little while back and I found it very interesting when, when, when I follow your stories, you do video recordings. Along like a lot of different things in your property. I haven’t seen your guidebooks before, so I don’t know what it’s like on the guest perspective side of things, but I’ve seen some of your recordings like share, share with the audience here.
Like what was your kind of your mindset? And like, what is the guest experience that you’re trying to strive for there? What’s with some of these videos?
Alex: Because I know everyone’s on their cell phone and they want a quick 10 to 15 second video on how to do something and like versus, uh, like, for example, at work, uh, we’ll get a memo like, Hey, guys, we need to do this.
And they send us an entire manual. Like, dude, can you tell me like, give me 15 to 30 seconds, how to do this right away. And so. My mindset whenever I’m at the property, I’ll have a list of videos that I’ve created at every single property and I’ll just check off the list, like how to operate the dishwasher, how to, you know, uh, in case the batteries at your smart lock aren’t working, where are the backup batteries, how to reset the, the wifi, how to reset the breakers, where the extra batteries are, all of these little videos, and I’ll go there and it’s It’s nothing fancy.
It’s not edited or anything like that. It’s just me taking out my phone and the goal is be quick, get to the point right away. And um, you know, I think initially I was sending people instructions the same exact way, you know, but the thing is like, I think it means a lot more to the guests that it’s an actual video of me at the property.
Like walking them through that, for example, the hot tub, but we, hot tubs are a pain in the butt. If you guys haven’t had a hot tub and most people don’t know how to operate a hot tub. But the thing is, if you can show them, like when you open up the hot tub, it should read a hundred degrees. You’re going to increase the temperature this way.
And this way, if you have issues, most likely it’s because you push this button. And if you could give them a high level video of a quick 15 to 30 seconds, I think it’s very powerful for them.
Gil: How long,
Alex: how long ago did you put that in practice? Uh, we started a YouTube channel over, uh, I mean, initially like, like three years ago.
And it was cause my mindset is whenever guests ask us something, we’ll answer it right away. But if a guest asks us the same question again, and then the issues on me, like how do we solve this to where they’re not asking me the same question, especially if it’s something really simple to figure out. And what’s interesting is we have this YouTube playlist and it would have like different views.
Some of them would go viral. Cause I’d say like just some stupid stuff or whatever, you know? And, and so some of them will get like a million views. And it’s interesting cause we’ll put like book at Tanya’s cabin. com almost for your free advertising. Right. And so, um, yeah, so we started that and then. But the thing is throughout business over four years now you kind of start learning different things and whenever guests ask us about something random, we’ll think, Oh, shoot, we should do this a video for all of our properties.
And so whenever I go back to those properties, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll create like a video for every single one. So
Gil: how many, how many videos you go through per property?
Alex: Oh, there’s probably like 20 videos. Yeah, and some of the stupidest things like you’d be surprised like for example, one of the most recent ones was because we have a samsung fridge and for whatever reason the the ice maker like it gets flipped every now and then and it doesn’t make ice and so our thought process was Oh, okay.
If everyone’s having issue with a ice maker, um, how do you reset it? And the thing is you could definitely send them like a YouTube video on how to do it. But the thing is it’s a lot more impactful if it’s actually you at the property. And we actually put that in our digital guidebook. And so whenever people ask us questions, like let’s say if they tell us like, Hey, the refrigerator is not making ice, we’ll actually, cause we use touch day, we’ll copy that link.
So that way it’s always referring the guests back to what we’re answering their question, but we’re also constantly referring them back to the digital guidebook. So
Gil: yeah, my, my, my follow up question was going to be like, how do you distribute this? Because I’m guessing you’re not giving them a YouTube playlist to go through.
It sounds like, you know, embed that into your touch day. So I’m guessing it’s just like a link that opens up. The browser or whatever their YouTube
Alex: correct. Yeah, touch day. And the thing is, uh, with the hurricane season, it’s been, uh, eye opening because people ask, well, what happens if you don’t have power?
And so, you know, what we do is because on touch day, you can actually download the actual guidebook and not have the Wi Fi. So that way they always have it. And so after a guest book, we always tell them like, Hey, can you download this? So, um, it might not pull up the videos if the wifi is down, like we had no wifi in North Carolina, but there’s a little like brief description there as well.
So.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. That’s actually a good transition to something I wanted to ask you about was what was like, what was your experience like with all the hurricanes that were passing through just this past month?
Alex: Um, it’s kind of changed my perspective because the thing is, we got to keep our guests safe.
Like you have responsibility there. And so one of the things we’re implementing now is to have a disaster relief bucket. We just don’t know how to, uh, put it in an area where guests aren’t going to go through and rummage through and like, Oh my gosh, extra toilet paper, extra water or whatever. We just have to put like, um, a sign there that will say, um, for a natural disaster, like a bucket or whatever it is.
Gil: Yeah.
Alex: Um, so yeah, we wound up having to cancel our guests, uh, safety first. And, um, we had no power for a week. We were fortunate. I mean, our house sits up on a hill. And so a lot of the flooding in Asheville happened near the river. Or any of the properties that were down there. They were close to that. And so we had no damage.
A couple people had trees fall on their roofs in our community. But fortunately enough, we didn’t have that. Um, and so we didn’t Have running water for about a week and a half. Uh, so that took some time to finally restore. And still right now there’s like a boil advisory. It’s still not drinkable water.
And then when wifi finally came back on. So,
Gil: so you’re, you’re, you’re not on a well, you’re, you’re on city water there. I’m guessing. Correct. Yeah. City water. Okay. Okay. Why? Yeah. We’re very fortunate. Yeah. I hear some horror stories about folks that just, they had to shut down and they’re, they’re probably not going to be able to go back up until the repairs are done.
So they’re missing out on a good chunk of their holiday season because of that.
Alex: Like right now we’ve been, um, we’ve canceled a lot of our bookings. And so this month we’ve just had relief workers stay, um, and they’re from a church. Um, I think we’ve had three different groups come in for like three, four days at a time.
Uh, so that’s kind of helped us out. What we are very cognizant about is keeping everyone employed. And so like, for example, our cleaners, like everyone’s short term rentals have shut down and their livelihood. We’re, was cleaning all of these short term rentals. And so we’re like, Hey, you want to go over there and do a deep clean?
Can you go over there and do this just so that way, because they need the money to rebuild one of our cleaners, um, uh, she, she’s part of the team, she lost everything. And so we donated to her, go fund me. And then like, we’re, we’re trying to find work for her to do. Uh, same with our handyman. Like, you know, we want to keep them, uh, employed and, uh, have work like.
One of the things that happened, uh, since the power was out, all of our smoke detectors, uh, the batteries pretty much drained and they’re over there and they’re, they’re like beeping constantly. And so I said, Hey, um, I got a really cheap job for you, a couple hundred bucks. Can you go over there and just change all of the batteries for me?
Uh, so no, just pay me, you know, you know, 50 bucks for the batteries. I said, no, like I’m trying to keep you guys employed to where you could rebuild. So,
Gil: yeah, I, I often hear like our, our industry, I think real estate in general has like a bad rep of like us being investors and us going in there and just charging and making money off rents.
But like. I actually see like almost the opposite of that where in during these times I’ve heard many, many stories similar to yours, where during these times, like we actually care a lot about our teams. Um, and that’s, that’s regardless of whether or not there’s a disaster, we care a lot of our teams like.
It’s, I try not to change cleaners all that often unless they really, really mess up. Um, and I try to like make sure like I set my expectations, my, my expectations very clearly. Um, but like most folks that are in the game, they actually care a lot about their teams that they want the teams to stick around for a long time and they want their team to thrive.
And like, that’s a whole side of the industry that a lot of folks don’t get a lot of exposure to.
Alex: No, it’s true. I mean, and especially when the hurricanes came through, even in the Smokies, people were kind of affected in Newport, Tennessee. And so I sent the message to my cleaners. I said, Hey, if, if anyone in your team has been affected, my house is vacant.
Like they can stay at that, just have them clean up. And what’s interesting is, so my cleaner, she, she cleans like over 130 homes. And she said, not one owner reached out to us and offered her a set. Um, and I’ve been doing this regularly. Uh, like, I don’t know if you were in the Smokies when winter hit during Christmas and nobody had power.
And so I offered the same thing. So our cleaners, I said, if you guys don’t have power. My property over there still has Wi Fi in power. You could, you know, shelter for the night or two. I mean, until, you know, things get settled. Um, and so I’ve been regularly offering that to whoever our staff is, especially if we have like a handyman that’s, um, uh, working with us regularly or even the cleaners or even someone in their family.
I’ll, I’ll tell my cleaners, you know, if you guys are struggling, you know, stay in there for the night or two, wherever it is, and then just clean up after the property and we’ll be good.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I never, I hadn’t, I don’t, I don’t put that in play, but like, that’s actually a good practice. Like I remember, I don’t know if it was like 20, 2023, 2022, I think it was 2222 was like the really nasty year where like our pipes were freezing.
We didn’t have, and this is, this is like the worst time. This is between Chris Christmas and new years where our ADRs are like the very, very peak. And you just, it was like freezing and like our AC was out, our heater was out. Like it was just a horrific time.
Alex: Right, right. And the thing is to get people out there, you want to be sensitive to your cleaners and your handyman you’re going to, you know, cause you need someone to go over there and fix the pipes or whatever it is.
But they’re dealing with stuff too. They’re not trying to drive through the icy roads or anything like that. Or they, they’re trying to celebrate Christmas as well. So, uh, definitely, uh, one of the most memorable things that we kind of went through. And I think we’re all in the same boat too.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I, You’re, you’re, you’re making me think about like how I think about my gap days in, in winter, because like a lot of times we think about like, Oh, how do we fill, fill every single gap?
But like, also that’s an opportunity to, to give back as well too. So I appreciate you, you sharing that with us. Yeah. And having
Alex: them thrown out of bone, like, you know, in the slow season, like January and February, cause I did this in Gulf Shores, uh, asked my cleaners there. I said, Hey, you know what, if you guys are in Asheville or cause they saw our QR code.
They saw our QR code. They said, Oh, we saw all your properties. I said, you know what, if you guys like it in the slow season, if you guys want a place to stay for three, three nights or something like that, especially if it’s during the weekday, like you’re more than welcome to go over there and just pay me the cleaning fee.
I mean, just that gesture to them, you’d be surprised. This is a people business and especially out there. A lot of people are old school where a handshake means something or a gesture like that means something. So now, like if I have an issue, those guys are coming. Um, to help me right away.
Gil: So, yeah, do you, do you feel like at this point over the, now it’s like four years that you have a pretty, pretty solid team in each market that you’re at?
Alex: I would say in Tennessee, I mean, I’ve had to, um, I’ve been in, uh, in Phoenix now, I mean, just, that was our, our, our most recent one, uh, and we’ve only been in that market for two months, but we know what to look for now. We know how to build a team. We know how to treat people, how to talk to people, how to, uh, pay people, like, and how to automate stuff.
And we know what different providers like, uh, because they want to make it easy as well. Like even what stuff to provide for cleaners, uh, in, in the property. So that way it makes their lives easier.
Gil: Yeah. That makes sense. Talk to me about, um, What I knew you for, and this is a couple of years back, was your coaching business.
Talk to me about why you decided to start that coaching business in the first place.
Alex: Uh, to make better use of my time, to be honest with you. Um, so what happened was, during COVID, I started my short term rental business. I’m a respiratory therapist. I’m in healthcare. And what happened was, there were so many people that were coming up to me asking, I heard you’re making money.
I heard your wife retired because you’re making money owning these cabins. How do you do it? And so initially I said, okay, let me just start holding these zoom meetings. I remember I put like, Hey, if anyone is interested in investing in short term rentals, I’ll tell you my story, the ins and outs and the mistakes I’ve made.
And then, uh, I think I put that out and then like a week later, 70 people show up to the zoom meeting. I’m like, Oh my gosh, what the heck’s going on here? And then come to find out the more you talk to people because in health care, a lot of times people stay with their own disciplines. Like I’m a respiratory therapist, like we’ll talk to nurses every now and then.
But for the most part, we’re talking to other respiratory therapists, radiologists will talk to them, like physicians will talk to them. And there’s not too much of this, like, I guess, co mingling. Um, and it’s because like, you know, we’re, we’re working close proximity. Those are the people that we see the most, right.
But, um, Come to find out, like, all of these physicians, these surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, uh, physician assistants, they all felt the same way that I did. I was like, oh, crap, we’re all burnt out. And, you know, we’re all, like, looking for extra income and tax breaks, so on and so forth. And so I started just speaking out there and putting it out there for different healthcare professionals.
And then eventually it got to a point where I was, like, you know, helping people constantly and I said, you Let me hold these weekly meetups. Uh, and then I started adding so much value to people at a certain point. I was like, you know, a lot of people were asking for like one on one help and holding. And because the thing is, if you have, if you could definitely look up everything on YouTube, there’s nothing special that I say, but the thing is, if you need a more targeted approach where you need like more direction, which is what a lot of like positions needed, they’re like, I don’t have time to do all the research on YouTube.
I don’t have time to go through all the Facebook group pages and try to find all the answers. Can you just help me out? Because I need to purchase a property here in the next 2, 3 months. Um, and so that’s why I started that coaching program. So it’s been pretty cool so far.
Gil: Yeah. It seems like, um, I hear a lot of this in like the marketing space and this kind of connects to direct bookings as well too, but it’s almost like you niche down to a target audience that you really resonate with and therefore when you were talking to, to these folks, you can talk to anyone, like you can talk to any.
Hey, anyone that’s a high paying, like high earning individual and be able to give the same talk, but you talking to folks that you see their life, you see their challenges day in, day out. Like they, you empathize with them and vice versa, they empathize with you. And there’s like this instant trust that’s being built there where if you put anyone else in this place, any other coach, it would not have that effectiveness.
You would not have been able to get the traction that you were able to get those early days.
Alex: 100%, 1000%. There’s this A to B connection that when people see me, they think of like, Oh, that’s the dude I work with, right? That’s the RT that I work with every single day. And if he could do it, I could do it too.
So and then having more conversations with them, just being very open and not Uh, I don’t know, just, like I said, I shared my story of having a bankruptcy and foreclosure, like when I first started, or having, uh, like, uh, getting scammed and just being real with them, it, it, uh, I don’t know, you gain a lot of trust with them that way, and then, Initially, like I don’t ask for anything like I always had this mindset of helping people out as much as possible without ever asking anything in return.
Gil: Yeah,
Alex: it isn’t until they start asking me and it was crazy because two, three years ago, there was so many people that was asking for coaching. And I said, No, I’ll just help you out. And at a certain point, I started getting burnt out because it was just like overwhelming so many people asking me for help.
And then that’s when I, you know, did a little bit more of the one on one stuff. So
Gil: Yeah. As you think about, like, your mission there, like, do you have any ideas of, like, how this might evolve into a way that you can scale this to, to more folks? Or is this, are you still trying to figure out, like, what this may end up becoming many years from now?
Alex: Yeah, no, I don’t, I’m not that smart to think that far ahead, to be honest with you. Um, I think I like keeping it small and tight because I do, um, um, see a lot of the other, uh, influencers out there. Um, they spend so much money on advertising. They have such a huge team, so on and so forth. At a certain point, um, I know we all invest in real estate for whatever reasons, but, uh, for me, it was to have more free time.
And what I find is, like, the more businesses I start, like, the less free time I have. And so at a certain point, like, does making money, like, how much more of that is a priority versus, you know, how do we automate this as much as possible so you can have more free time? So I don’t see myself growing that just because I spend so much time and effort with my students.
And because I want them to get a property. I want them to pay zero in taxes. I want them to automate the business. And if I have, uh, right now I have 32 students. And I can’t imagine if I had a hundred students, like I would be up all night texting people all day long. And I, I don’t know if I want that right now.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, I think that’s very smart of you to. Like be really mindful of like, what is the life that you’re trying to build and not just try to, I think a lot of times in our industry, we get into this mindset of like growth at all costs or keep on hustling or keep on growing. And, uh, I think a lot of folks, they’re actually pretty happy with the growth that they they’ve gone.
And it’s really about like, how do I want to balance out my life so that. Like a lot of us, like you, you have four kids, I have two kids, my own, like, that’s actually a pretty big part. It’s definitely a big part of my life. Like if I, I don’t want to sacrifice starting another set of, or another line of business and be able to not be there for my, my family.
And definitely like, I hear you on like, there’s other ways to automate and how to scale, but I don’t want that to come necessarily at a cost of a balanced life of what’s important to me. Yeah,
Alex: it’s definitely something that a lot of us business owners have been struggling with. Um, we were just talking about this with another friend of mine, like, at what point is enough?
And I’m pretty much at that point right now, you know?
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. It’s tough too. Like you, unless you’re talking to entrepreneurs like very vulnerably about some of these things, you don’t really know when you hit that point and you don’t know like what are the signs where you feel like, Oh, I need to push myself harder to get over this hump or There’s actually, I’m in a good place right now.
Like I don’t necessarily need to have more there. Like you don’t really have a good way to, I actually haven’t, I haven’t found a good way to like check myself because I’ve burned myself out a lot of times in tech, like at a startup. We are living in our offices. We are spending a lot of time like with our teams, especially during those early days of like launching a company out there and you sacrifice a lot, you sacrifice and you push through pretty hard and it’s, it’s hard to like realize like, okay, like maybe I need to slow down right now.
And a lot of times when you do slow down, it’s, those are the moments where you’re like, you start to figure out like, oh. Actually, I’ve been building up this thing that I don’t necessarily need to build. Or there probably could be another way I can be serving my life a bit more effectively.
Alex: Yeah, that’s kind of how I got into co hosting, to be honest with you.
Like, there was a physician that came up to me. He lives in Phoenix. And I’m cheap as hell, so I’ve been driving back and forth there. I think I drove back and forth three times there within the last two months to help him set up his short term rental. He was pivoting from midterm rental to short term rental and he needed my help.
Uh, so that’s definitely been, uh, I, I say yes to all those businesses cause I’ve been trying to help out, you know, so many people. And so when I got there, this is not how you set up a short term rent, there’s so much for me to fix. Right. I mean, like, they only had one tv. They had like simple things, right?
Like let’s say the, the wifi password is still, the old password that they have we’re given from, you know, like Comcast or whatever. Yeah. It’s this extremely difficult password. I’m like, how are you expecting guests to sign onto the wifi here? You know? And so, and it’s different too because it’s not your budget.
And so like I put so much time and effort there. Uh, but you know, uh, like I said, at a certain point you gotta. Starts start saying no to different things and I think I’m almost there. So I say that now but
Gil: More recently I’ve been hearing a lot of folks talk about the topic of like The purpose and the why, have you figured out what your, your, your why is, are you still in discovery on that one?
Alex: Still definitely in discovery and I’ve probably like everyone always says your family, right? Um, and that’s definitely me. Um, and my, it sucks cause my kids are older for me to kind of come to that conclusion. Like I wish I would have been better at this business. So that way I could have spent so much more time with them.
But I mean, we’re still trying to figure that out as well right now. So like my oldest is in college. Uh, she’s 21 years old, uh, and then my second, uh, just started, uh, college as well. So she just graduated high school, but, uh,
Gil: yeah, it’s, you don’t realize that until those moments are gone. And like, you’re like, oh, I wish I spent a little bit more time and that’s a lot of, a lot of older parents or parents that have been, have older kids, they, one, one advice I hear often, like very, very often given to me is like, Gil, you’re building this business, but don’t forget that like you have two young kids in the golden years where They still want to spend time with you.
They still want to go on trips with you They still want to have conversations after school with you and they don’t always last That’s not that’s not the phase in later later on in life So I have to like constantly remind myself that like, okay, it’s not all about just Making sure that business accessible, but like making sure that I’m showing up as a dad more, more effectively than than ever.
Alex: Hopefully they see that later on in life. They see the sacrifices that we made, uh, to try to provide for them and to get them to the certain point. Like my oldest daughter, like, you know, we paid for her school at UCSD. Um, there’s no way I would have been able to do that, uh, without starting this business.
Gil: That is, that is, that’s a very fine balance there. Like you hustle because you, you, you do it for them, but at the same time, like you don’t want to hustle too much where you’re not actively there in front of them. So it’s like you have to really work that really fine line as a parent. That’s, that’s very challenging.
Yeah. Uh, to maybe go to a different, like less soft topic, maybe talk to me a little bit about, uh, since this is a direct booking show, I definitely want to chat with you about, um, some of the tactics and strategies that you’ve done to kind of build up your direct booking like engine there. Talk to me a little bit about, um, what have you done in direct bookings and what have you found effective?
Alex: You mean all the mistakes I made? Because the thing is we’re we have like five star reviews all the time and it’s crazy because what people have always wrote to us Their reviews are like this was one of the best places we stayed at will definitely be back and they never came back and so what we found is you have to keep a relationship with your customer and just keep in contact with them And let them know like, Hey, you know, we, we have, uh, the hangout fest coming.
You know, you stayed with us last time. We’d love to host you again. Um, and so early on, and I think you’re talking like two, three years of hosting, like we didn’t collect any of their info. And so you have probably thousands of people that have stayed at my property. And we didn’t collect any of their info and we, that relationship was gone.
And so now we try to collect as many emails as we As we can and email them and contact them every now and then especially sometimes for example We had a guest stay with us a snowbird. She stayed with us last year and paid a premium And so like this year i’m keeping in contact with her and saying hey, you know, do you want to stay again?
Like no, you know I’m looking to say somewhere else, but I’ll keep you in mind. So just keeping in contact with your guests and keeping that, uh, line of communication open, uh, so they don’t forget about you. So,
Gil: yeah, maybe this is an assumption and please correct me, but it’s based on what you just said there.
It’s a combination of. Both automated, but also manually keeping contact there because I imagine that if you have hundreds of emails out there, you’re going to have some type of automation in place so you can scale that. But it sounds like also, you know, there are certain guests that have stayed with you that are high value that.
Needs a bit more of a manual touch there. So yeah,
Alex: I’ll tag them. I’ll tag them at VIP. Like all of, all of your guests, you want to say as VIP, but let’s be honest. Like some of them, some guests are going to be, they’re going to pay at a higher price point. They’re going to be a lot easier than different ones.
Those are the guests that you want to keep coming back. Right now, obviously, like vast majority of our guests, we want coming back, but there’s definitely like that. Snowbird. She paid me a premium. I’d love to host her every single year. And in fact, I even offered her a 25 percent discount of what she paid last year.
And even if you paid that, I would still absolutely be extremely happy with that discount. So we do automate this. So we use stay five on guests will collect probably 2 to 3 emails. Yeah. First day. Um, and so we put them into a direct marketing campaign and they’ll get an email from us every single week, just so that way, you know, we’re, we’re in their inbox and they don’t, they don’t completely forget us.
So,
Gil: yeah. And so what do you do with the VIP tag? You see, you mentioned that you, you tag your, your, your guest VIP. Does that go into some of the lists that you manually touch that you contact or how do you do it? Yeah.
Alex: Yeah. So I’ll tag them, uh, VIP and I’ll also tag like which properties they stayed at. Um, and I mean, you’re talking the VIP tag is pretty rare.
I mean, we probably have less than 10 people, uh, that we tag VIP. And so we’ll do a little bit of manual work and contact them, let them know that, Oh, you know what, um, uh, this, uh, concert’s coming to town. Like please use this coupon code or whatever it is.
Gil: Yeah. What’s, uh, you mentioned that. You tried a bunch of things that didn’t, didn’t work.
What was like one of your biggest, biggest lessons going through all this? And it could be a wraparound one.
Alex: Yeah, it’s kind of evolved. I mean, initially on Airbnb, we were asking for their email. I guess that’s a big no, no. And so like, and so I was like, Oh crap, I don’t want to get kicked off this platform that’s giving me a bunch of bookings.
And so then we started with QR codes. And the QR codes would reveal the Wi Fi password. Uh, what we found is that guests didn’t like that and it was kind of a pain in the butt, uh, where guests, uh, would wind up contacting us anyway and asking us what the Wi Fi password is and they, they wouldn’t know where it is.
And we didn’t collect that many emails from that either. Um, and not only that, it reveals the Wi Fi password. They tend to share it with everyone else. Right. And so we do feel like Stafi has been really good for us. Not only that, um, like we have our guests sign a rental agreement. And so from that rental agreement, we also get their email there.
Uh, so that way we keep in contact with them. Because if a guest books on Airbnb, you don’t have their email.
Gil: Yeah, so I believe you’re on OR where you get access to that because they’re signing the rental agreement, you get access to their emails. Um, and if I remember correctly, this is probably in the early days of when we first met.
You weren’t on OR previously and like that was probably like one of the big perks of you actually being on there.
Alex: That was a huge perk is signing the rental agreement. It’s because I had. I had a couple of safety first, right? Because the thing is, like, we have properties with indoor pools. And so I didn’t feel comfortable with the liability.
Obviously, like, we made the pool as safe as possible, having all the signs, all the life vessel and so forth. But the thing is. I wanted something signed, uh, just, uh, something saying we’re not liable. We’re, we’re telling you all of these things. And that’s part of where the videos came across too. Cause I created a video on like, we have this complex lock on how to open this pool gate, uh, that would alarm like crazy.
And so we created a video for that and guests have to, when we message guests on. Owner as and it goes to Airbnb. It actually says seen like, please watch this safety video as well. So, uh, little things that I’ve done there to kind of get to that point where I am getting the rental agreement signed with their email.
So,
Gil: yeah, it seems like your, your, your day job in, uh, in, in the healthcare business is like percolating back into your hospitality business where like, I know like for healthcare, it’s very Checklist oriented, procedure oriented. And you’re basically trying to figure out like, how do you put procedures in place to make sure things don’t go terribly bad?
Um, yeah, and you’re now putting that in, not, not now, but you’ve always been putting that in practice in your short term business.
Alex: What I find is physicians, they love ONARES for the rental agreement because in real life, they’re used to asking patients. Oh, can you sign this, you know, consent or whatever it is, uh, so they’re always mindful of that.
And so here, that’s why they love ONARES. They’ll, they’ll have that. piece of paper. I’ve never used that piece of paper for anything. I’ve never said, Oh my gosh, you signed this legal agreement. And even in the legal agreement, it says we won’t refund you X amount if X happens, or if this happens, I’ve never enforced it to be honest with you.
I just liked having that just in case if things get really bad. So,
Gil: yeah. Any other tactics that you found effective on the direct booking side? So it sounds like email is probably like one of the, like the biggest things that. You are now, not now, but you’re, you’re, you’re leveraging to drive more and more direct bookings.
Alex: Um, getting on, I got kicked off recently, but we were on Google My Business. I don’t even know if it’s that anymore, but we’ll, we’ll tag ourselves on Google Maps. Uh, the property, I find that in the beach markets, this, uh, people tend to book direct there more, uh, than the mountains communities. And I don’t know if they’re just, guests are looking on the map.
And saying, oh, this property is close to the beach. Let’s just reach out to these people. Or, uh, well, another tip that we’ve done is, um, In our listings on the OTAs, we’ll say, uh, Here at Tanya’s Cabin. And so they’ll look us up. Um, and so they kind of put two and two together and say, Oh, we, they can actually, you know, like save some money there.
So, um, there’s another,
Gil: that’s probably like the one most effective way. Anyone that’s starting off in direct bookings, they don’t have stay five. They don’t have, I mean, email us to go off of like the first thing that they should do once they get their direct booking site. Like once they have a domain up, set up and their site set up and everything, you should be, you know, Making sure that on the OTAs that you actually list that it’s hosted by.
XYZ and just putting it out there. Guests are pretty smart nowadays. Like, especially with that, the ad symbol and they’re looking for it. Like there’s, they know that this is actually a brand and that brand probably exists outside of Airbnb. And I could probably save a little bit of money or at least find out more about the property and, and then stumble upon that.
I can say by booking direct by far, like Just doing that alone, you’ll start getting your own direct bookings if you have enough volume there.
Alex: Yeah, and there’s this other site that we use, it’s called NoFe, N O F I E. And so what it does is, we’ll list our direct booking website on there, and then there’s your Airbnb listing and VRBO listing.
But I think guests can put in their dates, let’s say they put in October 23rd to October 31st. And it’ll actually tell you how much you’re going to pay on each site. So then it kind of empowers them. Because, uh, there was a guest that said, Oh, we are VRBO guests, like we only book on VRBO. And so we sent them that site.
And then they actually physically see that, Oh, it’s the same exact pictures. It’s the same exact owner. And so at that point they can decide whether, and I said, you could book with VRBO all you want, but here’s the difference between, uh, our prop, our direct booking and versus VRBO. And so that’s one of the booking with us direct.
Gil: Is that through VRBO messages or did you talk to them outside of that? Yeah. Yeah. Cause I always had their email. So, uh, yeah, I’m always weary. I almost like if someone’s going to message me on, on platform, I’ll always push them back onto the platform because I did not want to get in trouble and being kicked out to me.
That’s not worth it. But if they find me and they contact me, then I’ll tell them the differences of it. But no way am I ever going to on platform message a guest and say, you can find me on this website or you can find me here or yeah, I had a guest the other day. Like they, they asked like. I forgot what they were saying.
Like they’re asking, like, can I book with you direct? Or I found you on direct, but the difference is, is this? And I was like, uh, and they asked me, like, where should I book? I was like, I encourage you to book wherever you found us. And I just leave it at that. Like, I don’t want them and that I’m following terms and conditions.
There’s nothing like if someone found me on my direct first and then go on Airbnb, like, which is like less likely the case, but that does happen. Like the direct booking should go back to the booking should go back to direct. But if they found out Airbnb, go for like, go, go book on Airbnb.
Alex: Yes, we do the same.
Exactly. Sometimes they get the hint. We’ll say, um, no here at. Hillside Bungalow in Asheville. Um, we can’t host you on our direct booking site since you found us on Airbnb. But sometimes they get the hint. Cause then they’ll look up, if you do a Google search of Hillside Bungalow in Asheville, you’ll find my site there, so.
Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you, as long as you have your SEO in place, like you’ll, you’ll be found, especially when you have so many of those keywords like lined up back to back. Right. Yeah. Awesome. Alex, we usually, uh, end the show with two questions. Um, one’s a mindset question and one’s a takeaway question, uh, on the mindset question first, what’s that one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?
Alex: I, uh, I think there’s. There’s no playbook out there. Like you could do as much research as you want and join the different programs But nobody’s gonna talk to you about oh Like I had a guest stay for eight months and he was trying to scam me out of the entire booking And so you kind of have to work through that and there’s gonna be a lot of things that in business That you’re not gonna be prepared for and just work through those And it’s, it’s okay.
It’s not the end of the world. Like I said, I got scammed. I should have stopped investing in real estate right off the bat, but I kind of worked through all that and you’re going to have your failures and, and just work through all that. Um, uh, just as long as you keep, keep up with it. You’re going to be okay in the end.
Like I said, was scammed, had a foreclosure bankruptcy earlier on. I should have thrown the towel a long time ago, but I kept up with it. I’m in a good place right now.
Gil: Yeah. What gave you that hunch to keep on pursuing it? Was that, that, that, that feeling inside that this is actually worth pursuing and that you feel like that was a mistake.
That was a lesson learned. I was probably
Alex: too stupid to think, you know, to really think myself, like, uh, the richest people I knew growing up where my grandparents, uh, they had a boarding care facility, uh, that’s an Asian thing to do where, you know, this is in the eighties, they, they had a boarding care facility.
And I remember when I purchased my first home, uh, in 2003, and it was my primary home. And my grandma told me, um, you know, I never made. Good money until I started investing in real estate. And it’s not like she told me anything that was like groundbreaking or anything like that. But for some reason that stuck with me and I knew it was going to be the answer.
Like just buy homes that had no idea I would get into a hospitality, but, uh, cause that’s a special niche. But, uh, you know, I just knew that if I kept up with real estate that I’d be in a better place than I am now.
Gil: Yeah. There’s, there’s very few asset classes that can perform like real estate. Regardless, long term or short term in the long run, if you stick with it for a long period of time.
You will read the rewards. Right. And there’s very few exceptions to that.
Alex: Yeah, you could be as bad as me. Just you do that was awful. I’m telling you right now. But the thing is, I kept up with it. And things didn’t go right, just kind of rolled with the punches. And eventually, where you start isn’t going to be where you finish.
I had no idea being there. And dude, if you told me I would be buying beach homes in Alabama, I would have said, there’s beaches in Alabama, like what are you talking about, you know, and so you wind up in this place, because you kind of just Keep, uh, doing your research and, you know, eventually landing into these different, uh, markets or whatever it is.
So just keep up with it. I think you’ll be okay.
Gil: Most folks that I get to meet in the industry don’t think that they’re going to be in hospitality, that they’ll buy a vacation home and all these remote places. And like you just transform when you do that. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. Yeah. Uh, all right. Last question.
What’s the one big takeaway from today’s episode that you want our listeners to put into practice today?
Alex: What’s been hugely successful for me is I was helping out so many people without ever expecting anything in return and Like I said, I wasn’t smart enough. I didn’t have any Like motives or anything like that.
Whenever people kept coming up to me, asking me for help, I just helped them. I never had a goal of charging people on how to help them or grow this business. But what happens is you help so many people. And for some reason it kind of reciprocates and eventually you start growing and you’re wanting to be successful because you want to have all the answers because people keep coming up to you and asking you for different advice.
And so, yeah, just to help out as many people as possible without ever expecting anything in return, and for some magical reason, like, eventually, the universe works in your favor at that point.
Gil: 100%. 100%. Like, all the successful people that I know, they didn’t get there out of greed. They didn’t get there thinking that they can do it all themselves.
They leverage, really, Just the people around them, and they were a servant to the people around them. Um, and it does, it does come back to you, and it may not come back to you right away. It may not come back to you for years, but if you are constantly giving value to others, it will eventually come back to you.
Yep. That’s what’s happened to me. Awesome. Alex, where can, uh, folks stay in touch with you? How can they, uh, follow along your journey?
Alex: Uh, I’m a pretty addicted to social media lately. Uh, I know it’s something that I need to get off of, but I’m on Instagram, uh, at the real Alex Sabio. I think if you just type in my name, Alex Sabio will come up or on Facebook, you’ll, you could find me there.
If you’re a healthcare professional, join my group called healthcare professionals investing in real estate. That’s where I add a lot of value. A lot of tips every now and then, um, you know, how you can get started in short term rentals or tips on managing your short term rentals.
Gil: Awesome. Awesome. Alex, thanks for being on the show.
I’m glad to have you on and have you share your story and how you got started and some of the tactics that you did to really help you win more direct booking. So thanks for sharing. Oh, thanks. All right. Talk to you later. Bye. All right.