Every Tool We Use To Run Our Business
Hey Deal Family,
It’s been a while since I organized this list. Every year I go through our subscriptions,
software, tools, and business to see what’s working and what’s not.
The following list is the list of tools we use to run the day-to-day business.
Almost all of these tools have been in place for at least 6 months
Which is why I feel good about recommending them.
The list starts from the top of how we find deals and progresses down the line.
Business
Deals Done For You - Have deals delivered weekly that cashflow
This is where we find the best pre-analyzed deals across the entire country that
are in markets legal for Airbnb. These are hand-picked deals based on a proven
process that has worked for hundreds of profitable Airbnb properties.
The properties listed here have been scraped daily from brokers,
property managers, MLS listings, and other sources to cast the widest net possible.
Once all the deals have been scraped daily, they are run through
an automated analysis process to spit out the best, most profitable opportunities daily.
AirDNA
Furnished rental / Short-term rental data you can make decisions with.
Ever wonder how much a property should make on Airbnb?
Or maybe there’s an area you’re interested in and wonder if other people are successful in that market,
Or if tourists even go to that market. Voila - Enter AirDNA.
This tool scrapes data from Vrbo, Airbnb, and other sites to grade and predict market/property numbers. Of course, you still want to do your research by looking at comps And speaking to investors/brokers in the area, but it is a phenomenal starting point.
Deal Analysis Tool - For Free
Need a free tool? Grab ours.
With a good analysis tool, in about 1 minute, you should be able to get an idea if a property you are considering will cash flow.
Analyzing deals doesn’t have to take long, Especially when you are just trying to rule out if the deal has potential or not.
This is the same tool our team uses daily to find, analyze, and compare top properties in markets.
And share the information with our broker/lender. When we are in due diligence or about to submit an offer.
Hospitable
We have tried them all, this is our favorite Airbnb property mgt/guest management software.
It’s simple to use, inexpensive, and also constantly innovates.
There is also pre-built automation in Hospitable and they keep adding more, it just makes life way easier.
A few of our favorite feature/automation examples are:
Let guests know about changing door locks
Syncing availability across platforms, updating cleaners letting them know when we need properties cleaned AND
My personal favorite - sending messages before and after a guest arrives asking if they want to extend their stay at a discount (this is like cheating - easy money) and letting guests know about changing door locks.
Pricelabs
This is the tool we use to set pricing for our properties.
Instead of just guessing at how to price your properties, or lowballing your daily rate like Airbnb advises you to do, Pricelabs will give specific guidance on how to price
your property nightly, weekly, and monthly. Pricelabs will look at the other properties in your area, seasonality, trends, and current events to establish where you should
be pricing your property to get bookings, but also not to sell yourself short by pricing too low. If you are not using a tool like this, you are losing money.
Schlage
There is no perfect lock system - trust me - but Schlage is pretty dam good.
We were using August locks before this and I almost had a mental breakdown.
They just weren’t reliable or consistent enough. Besides a clean home that matches the photos, There are very few things that are more important than the guest being able to get into the property easily. With Schlage, we have found that to be very simple and easy.
Schlage also syncs with Hospitable so you can autogenerate the key code to be the last few digits of the guest’s phone number.
This cuts down on manual inputs and just makes life simple when you get a new booking. We also drill a lockbox onto the property as another backup option just in case the digital lock has issues.
Having one point of failure in this business is a recipe for disaster no matter how good option A is.
Hostfully
Digital welcome books. This is just a life simplifier.
In the past, we would use paper laminated guidebooks like everyone else,
but the problem was, that they were hard to update!
If a restaurant closes down or we want to add something to the guidebook,
We would need to reprint and re-laminate the sheet. And since I am not local, this required paying someone to do it and making sure it was set up properly. Not fun!
With Hostfully, you can create updated guidebooks and make improvements based on changes and guest feedback.
It makes life way easier knowing the guest can get great recommendations and that you can change them as needed.
Openphone
Want to communicate with guests and vendors but don’t feel comfortable giving us your cell phone? Thats us.
We love communicating but we don’t want to share more than we need to.
That is why we use Openphone. Openphone is an inexpensive software tool where you are given a new phone number you can use for your business.
We use it on mobile apps and desktops to make life easier when communicating with people in the business.
Another underrated feature is that you can see what conversations are going on in the business
If you are not the only person having them. If our virtual assistant team is talking to a guest or cleaner, I can jump in and catch up on the conversation without having to get that person involved.
Minut
Party prevention by listening to sound from inside the unit.
Don’t worry it’s not as creepy as it sounds.
You can listen without fully listening. You can monitor the noise levels (decibel levels) without hearing the words people are saying.
It’s great for preventing parties because you will get notified if loud music or TV is being played and you can get ahead of parties before they get out of control.
You can also sync it with Hospitable so that an automated message will be sent
if the sound is too high. Winning.
Turno
If you are not tracking/managing your cleaners properly, you are losing to the hosts that do. If you get a bad cleaning review, that can hurt your reviews.
If you get more than one of these, that can kill your listing. Cleaning operations matters. We use Turno to solve this. It’s the tool we use to coordinate with our cleaners,
find new cleaners, and manage inventory at the properties. By using this software you can manage the process better and prevent cleaning issues from happening in the first place.
Onlinejobs.ph
We have tried a lot of platforms for finding talent in the Philippines, and Onlinejobs has consistently been the best. The talent is strong, typically very reliable and trustworthy.
There is a cost (at the time of writing this $69/mo but you can cancel after you find the person you like) compared to using Upwork or freelancer.com but we find it’s almost always worth it.
One of the only issues we found with Onlinejobs is that there are too many candidates on the platform at times, and that can create problems around screening people and becoming overwhelmed with candidates.
For that reason, we have started using 7dayVA as a framework to automate finding the best candidates quickly.
7 day VA
This is the process we use to find, screen, interview, and hire the best Philippine virtual assistants.
Using this framework we have been able to hire over 20 virtual assistants over the last 2 years to help with different business processes.
Most people we talk to struggle with 2 things - finding VAs quickly, and ensuring they are successful when they start.
This process solves that. It is the best solution in the market for finding and onboarding the top VAs for specific roles as quickly as possible.
It’s the key to us running our entire business.
Loom
I have posted about this many times before.
Loom might save us more time in operational efficiency than any tool on this list. It’s a screen recording tool that we use all day to prevent having meetings. All week our team is sending loom videos back and forth - internally and externally.
Most meetings aren’t needed, and most meetings are difficult to schedule. Loom solves both of those problems and others. We also use it to document all of our processes for training and process improvement. We also use it to document all of our processes for training and process improvement.
If there is a new process we want to show someone how to use, We just made a looming video instead of a 1-hour meeting with 4 people pulled away from their tasks. Then, people can watch the training on their own time and they can make comments/give feedback we can come together to review.
Can monkey
The company I am considering for help with trash removal.
More to come on this one but for those of you who run short-term rentals,
You know that bringing the trash to and from the curb is a bigger issue than you might think.
If you do not do this on schedule, you can get tickets, fined or even worse - your property could be shut down.
You want to make sure this is handled. Right now we typically solve this by finding a runner or having one of our cleaners pitch in,
but we have been actively looking for more automated solutions for this, and Can Monkey might help here.
Facebook groups
For research and to find people:
Stay-at-home mom groups
Cleaner groups
Other investor groups
Our team is on FB all day. It has become one of the best sources of information and finding people to help in the business.
Facebook groups can be incredible resources if you join the right ones.
My advice would be to join the local investor /Airbnb/STR groups in your area
As well as the stay-at-home moms / military housewife groups.
These groups are awesome for getting feedback on things, finding vendors, and even finding out bookings that hosts can’t handle and want to give away.
Notion
Notion is our project management tool.
Some people try it once, and get a little overwhelmed by it but trust me,
If you can get the hang of this tool, it’s INCREDIBLY powerful. We track our finances, social media content, guest check-ins/check-outs, and much more here. Our team has been fully trained on it at this point but for those considering it,
I would say watch 1-2 hours of YouTube videos and start small. I think it’s the best tool out there when it comes to combining notes, spreadsheets, databases, and files. I start and end my day with this tool.
Slack
This is our internal messaging tool.
I like quick communication but also warn you and my team - do not live on Slack and keep it open all day.
For us, it’s mainly used for urgent things that need to be handled faster than Notion comments.
For people on the team other than our STR managers, I recommend checking Slack a few times only throughout the day and making sure the rest of the time is spent on business-critical work.
Google suite
I think most of you know what Google Suite is.
I came from Microsoft and prefer it much more. The sharing capabilities and price alone made the move very easy.
We also find that external vendors such as contractors and handy people prefer it and are more familiar with it when we need to share files.
Airbnb
This one might seem obvious but it’s not exactly what you think. Of course we list
our properties on Airbnb but the main I use Airbnb for is to find exact comps to the
properties I’m considering buying.
Its a free way to research an area and know what other people charge, how booked
they are, and how much they charge for cleaning.
***If you are considering starting a listing in the future, use this ambassador link. You will get an Airbnb algorithm boost leading to more bookings and you will get a $40 credit on your Airbnb account. Bookmark this link and come back to it whenever you are ready to start your first listing.
Ok, fam that’s it!
Hope you enjoyed it, if you’re curious about my full list of personal tools I use to run my
life outside of business, just reply - personal - and I will draft that for next week
PS: if you have a first property going online at any point in the future, use this link to start it. It’s my Airbnb ambassador link and you will get a free algo boost and a $40 credit just for starting with this link.
