The One System Your Airbnb Business Is Missing

0:00Welcome to another episode of the STR Sisterhood. I'm your host, Stacey St. John, and I am so darn delighted to spend a few minutes with you today. Now, before we jump into this episode, I'm going to share a quote with you, and it says, how wonderful is it that nobody need weight a single moment before starting to improve the world? Those wonderful and inspiring words come to us from Anne Frank. Now, in this episode, I want to start by telling you about a family who spent an entire week of their vacation with a transportation problem because of one sentence somebody on my team typed into a message box. So, as you know, I manage condos and single family homes in Mertle Beach, South Carolina, and a while back the HOA of one of the condos we managed changed their parking rules. They used to let us give our guests two parking passes, and then they changed

1:00it to one. That's it. That's the whole change. It was the kind of thing you read, you think, okay, noted, and then you move on with your day because there are 12 other things happening that day, right? A few weeks later, a guest messages ahead of her stay and asks about parking. Totally normal question, and someone on my team answered her quickly, confidently, and completely wrong. She didn't look anything up. She just remembered what we had always told guests for years, two parking passes. So, that family drove down in two cars, and when they arrived, they found out that only one of those cars had anywhere to go. Now, we made it right. We found them alternate parking, and of course, we paid for it. But here's the part I still think about. That parking lot was more than two miles away, which meant for this family's entire vacation, half of them had a transportation problem. Every day they wanted to go to the beach, every dinner they wanted

2:03to go out to, every run to the grocery store for more sunscreen, every single day of the trip that they saved up for and looked forward to all year long. There was this little friction, and it traced back to one rule change that lived in the wrong place. Now, I want to be really clear about something, because it would be easy to hear that story and think, well, that's just a problem with a member of your team, and I don't have a team, so everything's fine. Stay with me here, because I actually think you're in more danger than I was. I had one person working from an outdated answer. You, my friend, have your own memory, and your memory is a source of truth that goes out of date without it ever telling you. So that's what we're talking about today, and I've wanted to do this episode for a while. We're going to talk about the one system that almost nobody tells you to build when you're getting started. It doesn't have a name that sounds exciting, and it won't get you more bookings this month, but it's the difference between a business that runs, and a business that

3:05only runs because you're personally holding all of it in your head. And I want to say this upfront, this is not an episode about being more organized. I'm not going to tell you you need to be more disciplined or try harder to remember things, because that is actually not the problem. And I think a lot of us have quietly been beating ourselves up over something that was actually never a character flaw to begin with. So let's start with a question, and I want you to actually answer it. Even if you're driving right now, and if you just answer it in your head, where does your business information actually live? Not where you want to keep it someday, not where you would put it if you had a free Saturday. Where is it right now today? Let me help you get started and just notice how many different places I name. Your Wi-Fi code is probably in your notes app on your phone. Your cleaner's phone number is in your phone contacts, but her rate isn't a text message from last spring. Your HOA rules come in as an email attachment. Your utility logins are saved in your

4:11browser on one laptop and the one you don't travel with. Your smart lock app password is in your head. The guy who fixed your hot water heater, you'd have to scroll back through your bank statements just to remember his name. And your trash day? Well, you know your trash day. I've done this exercise with so many women and here's what happens almost every single time. They expect to name maybe six or seven things and then they end up with 30 or 40. And I want to say something about that number because I think how you interpret it matters tremendously. That number is not evidence that you're disorganized. It's not evidence that you're bad at this hosting thing. It's what your one of a real business honestly looks like. You made a decision. You saved the information wherever you happened to be standing at that time and you kept moving because there was a guest checking in on Friday and you had a job in a family and a life to take care of. Every single one of those choices

5:12was completely reasonable in the moment you made it. But here's what it adds up to. 23 storage locations means there is no source of truth in your business. There's just you remembering. And when you are the source of truth, that business cannot run for a single day without you in the middle of it. Not because you built something fragile, just because nobody ever told you there was another way to do it. So here's the idea. And honestly, this whole episode is in this one line. Your property management software runs your bookings. Your command center runs your business. Now, some of you are listening and thinking, well, Stacy, I have a property management system and I am not disorganized. And I believe you, I totally do. And some of you are thinking the opposite. I don't even have a property management system and I manage everything right on Airbnb. Is that my problem? I want to answer both of you at once because the answer is exactly the same.

6:16Whatever runs your bookings was never built to solve this. If you have a property management system, it syncs your calendars, it pulls your guest messages into one inbox, it handles your reservations. And if you don't have one, Airbnb is doing that job for you. And honestly, it's probably doing it really well. Either way, that tool is running the guest facing machine and it's running just fine. But your door codes, your Wi-Fi passwords, your HOA rules, the name of the plumber who actually showed up when he said he would, the fact that the same toilet now has needed repair four times in the last six months, none of that has a home in either place. So it lives in your head and in your text messages and in three different apps on your phones and in a folder on your laptop called Airbnb stuff. I know that folder exists by the way, I've had that folder. That is not a discipline problem. That is a structure problem. And I love structure problems because structure problems are fixable in an afternoon. And one more thing

7:21on this because I know somebody's already writing me about it. No, you do not need a PMS to do this. That's a completely separate decision and it's in a whole other episode. Let me interrupt for just a minute. One of my favorite things about sharing these stories with you is that week after week, you get to hear just how many different paths there are to building a short terminal business. There isn't one right way to do this. You don't have to have the same resources, the same experience, or even the same starting point as the woman you're listening to today. But sometimes hearing someone else's story isn't quite enough. Sometimes you need people in your corner while you're writing your own. And that's exactly why I created the STR sisterhood. It's a place where women who are building and dreaming about building short terminal businesses can come together, learn, take action, ask questions, get support, and make real progress. Because this isn't about watching someone else

8:22build the business and the life that you want. It's about building yours and you don't have to do it alone. Come join us inside the STR sisterhood at STRsisterhood.com. Some of the most organized one property owners I know run all of their bookings on Airbnb and nothing else. The Command Center isn't software. It's a decision about where things live. Now I want to be careful here because this is exactly the point where people get overwhelmed and they quit altogether. If you go looking for advice on this, you're going to find these enormous systems built for portfolio operators. Owner portals and VA task boards and charge back tracking and onboarding pipelines. All of it is totally useful. None of it is your job right now if you have just one or two properties. When you have just one or two properties, you need three areas. That's all. Three. The first one is your property information. I think of it as your vault. Okay? Everything about the property itself

9:28in one place. Your door codes, your Wi-Fi network and password, utility accounts and logins, appliance brands and model numbers, paint colors, your H.O.A. rules, trash day, where the water shut off is, which breaker controls the outdoor outlets. And this is the one I had after the parking story. The rules exactly as you tell them to guests. Not roughly, but exactly. Here's the test I'd give you for this section. If you handed one page to a friend and left the country for two weeks, could she take care of your property? If the answer is no, congratulations. You've just found your gaps. All right, the second area is your people. Everyone who touches your property, your cleaner, your inspector, your handyman, plumber, electrician, your HVAC contractor, your lawn guy, whoever. And it's not just their phone number. You need to log their rates. What they're actually good at, whether they show up when they say they will. The one who came through

10:32for you when something went wrong and the one you'd never call again and why. You think you're going to remember all of that. And right now, with one property, you probably do. But I want you to hear this. That knowledge is the most expensive thing you own in this business. You paid for it in money and in bad experiences. And it exists in exactly one place, which is your memory. I want you to write it down. The third area is your history. And this is the one that always gets skipped. And it's also the one that pays you back the most. Every issue, what broke, when, who fixed it, and what it cost. Because today, that looks like a to-do list. But six months from now, that list turns into something completely different. It becomes evidence. You'll be able to look at it and see the same toilet that has needed fixed four times in the last six months. That your H-back has needed attention every single summer. That the cheap handyman has actually cost you more than

11:38the expensive one because you called him twice for the same job. That's not a task list anymore. That is data. And you cannot make that call from memory. You can only make it from a record. I always say data over drama, right? This is where that data actually comes from. Okay, can I lovingly challenge you for a minute? The most common thing I hear when I talk about this is some version of, well, I only have one property. And I'll set this up when I actually need it. And, candidly, I understand the logic. I just don't think it holds up. Because think about when you need it, it actually shows up. It shows up the week you close on property too. It shows up the month you hire your first virtual assistant. It shows up the day you get the call that there's water coming through the ceiling. And you cannot remember under pressure with your heart pounding where the water shut off valve is. These are the worst possible times of your life to build a system. You'll be busy. You'll be stressed. And you will build it badly.

12:44Right now with just one or two properties, this is done in an afternoon. With three properties in a team, it's a weekend and a little bit of a headache. With five, most people never do it at all. They just live inside the chaos permanently. And they call it being busy. You are currently in the easiest window you will ever have to do this. And that is not just me pressuring you. That's just math. And here's the part I actually care about because it really is not about organization. When your information lives in one place, you stop being the bottleneck in your business. Someone else can handle the door code. Someone else can call the plumber. You can go out to dinner and leave your phone in your bag. The business you're building is supposed to give you more freedom, not less. This is one of the specific boring and unglamorous mechanisms that makes that actually true. Now, let's go back to Myrtle Beach because there's a second half to that story that I think is

13:48the most useful part. When I looked into what happened, the thing that struck me was that the rule change wasn't lost. We had it. The information existed somewhere in our world. My team member didn't fail because she was careless. She failed because answering from memory was faster than finding the truth. And in that moment, it genuinely was. Every system fails at exactly that point. The second, the real answer is harder to reach than the remembered one. People stop reaching every single time, including you, including me, which brings me to something I found while I was preparing this episode. And candidly, I debated whether or not to tell you. I went into my own files to pull an example. And I found a code for a resort amenity listed in two different places with two different answers within the same property vault. Same property, two different answers

14:49when it comes to the same amenity. And one of them had a note next to it that said which quarter it was from, which means it had changed. And it was updated in one spot and the other spot, it was kept quietly sitting there being wrong. Now, nobody got hurt. It was simply an amenity code to the fitness center, a small thing. But it's exactly the failure I've been describing to you for the last 15 minutes, sitting in my own file in a business where I do this professionally. And I'm telling you that for two reasons. One, because I don't want you to think the goal here is perfection. And two, because it's the best possible illustration of the principle. A command center only works if it's the sole source of truth. Not the main one, not the usual one, the only one, which means the day that something changes, whether it's a rule or a rate or a code for a fitness center, it gets updated

15:50in one place immediately. No side documents, no, I'll text her for the new one later. Because the moment there are two answers in our world, somebody will eventually find the wrong one. Usually on a Friday and usually in front of a guest. And that's why this matters more for you than it did for me, even with one property and nobody on your payroll. I found out my system had failed because a guest was standing in a parking lot. You'll find out the same way. You'll send a guest the Wi-Fi password you changed last spring because it's still sitting in your saved message template. You'll tell somebody the pool is heated in October because it was last year until the HOA changed the schedule. Nobody is careless in these moments. They're just answering from a version of the truth that's expired. So the fix isn't trying harder to remember. It's building a place where the current answer is easier to find than the old one. That's the whole

16:53discipline. That's it. Now, before you go build anything, I want you to do one thing first and you can do this tonight in 20 minutes. You can't consolidate information you haven't accounted for. So first, you need to make yourself a list in two columns. On the left, every category of information your business runs on. On the right, one question, where does this live right now? And I want you to be specific and be honest. My phone notes is a real answer. A text from last spring is a real answer. Honestly, just writing down that it's in my head is a real honest answer. And I want you to write that down when it's true. Then I want you to count how many separate places you named. Not how many rows you filled in. I want you to write down how many different apps, folders, inboxes, notebooks, and people's memories. Your business is currently spread across. Now, I made a worksheet that walks you through this and it's completely free. It's called the

17:56scatter audit and you can grab it right here in the show notes. Fair warning, most people are pretty surprised by their own number. And that surprise is the useful part. Then if you want help with the part that comes after the audit, let me tell you what we're doing next. On September 9th and 10th, we're building your command center together inside the STR sisterhood. Two days live and you'll walk out with the thing actually built instead of one more good intention sitting on a list. I want to be straight with you. That's a members only thing. It's a part of what we do inside the all new STR sisterhood every month. And this is just one thing that's happening inside September. And I want to tell you why we're building that command center live instead of just handing you a template because I've watched a lot of women download a beautiful system and never open it again. The building isn't the hard part. Starting is the hard part. And starting is enormously easier

18:59when it's in a room full of women doing the exact same thing on the same afternoon where you can hold up what you've made and have somebody say, oh, I'd call him for that. So if you've been circling the sisterhood for a while, this is a pretty good week to come in because you'd be walking in right as we build something you can use immediately. You can find everything at STRsisterhood.com. And if the sisterhood isn't where you are right now, that is completely fine. And I mean that. Do the audit anyway. Seriously, the audit is the part that changes what you can see. And it doesn't cost you a dime, but 20 minutes and some honesty. So here's what I want you to take with you this week. Your PMS runs your bookings. Your command center runs your business. And right now, you are the command center. Everything routes through you. And that works right up until you're the only thing holding your business together. And listen, if you go do that audit and the

20:02number is bigger than you expected, I want you to be really kind to yourself about it. That number is not a verdict on you. It's just a map of a business that grew faster than the system underneath it. And that's a good problem. It's also a fixable one. Now, go find out where your business actually lives, my friend. And I'll see you next week. Hey, girlfriend, before we wrap up today, I want to ask you something. Are you actually building the short-term rental business? You keep saying you want to build? Or are you still getting ready to get ready? Because if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, my guess is that you don't need more proof that short-term rentals can change your life. You already believe that. What you need is a place where you can take everything you're learning and actually do something with it. And that's exactly why I created the STR sisterhood. It's a community of women building short-term rental businesses together with practical trainings, hands-on challenges, real conversations, accountability, and opportunities

21:05to actually work on your business. Instead of adding one more thing to your, I'll get to that someday list. And guess what? You don't need to have it all figured out before you walk through the door. You just need to be willing to take the next step. Because we may be at different stages, but we're all chasing the same dream. And I believe we're better together. Come join us inside the STR sisterhood at STRsisterhood.com.