$200K in 45 Days From One Airbnb (Start With $0 Down) - Ep. #314

Kyle Miklasz (0:00)

We hit 200,000, 45 days out from launch, and then we hit 300,000 and just three months out from launch. We pumped in, I think, $500 into one Instagram ad on a reel that we made. It wasn't even video, it was just like static images.

Chris Koerner (0:12)

For $500 one time, how many in bookings per day were you getting for that first period?

Kyle Miklasz (0:17)

Our average booking size is somewhere between $4,000 to $5,000 a booking, and there were some days we were getting five to six bookings a day.

Chris Koerner (0:24)

Oh my gosh.

Kyle Miklasz (0:24)

And then at that point, I was like, this deserves my full-time and attention. This is something that deserves to be scaled. Like there's clearly a gap in the market. We had 10 to 15 people a day reaching out, why they couldn't book the dates they wanted, because there was already a group that booked it. We had a wait list of hundreds of people that were waiting for the second one. I would say the better option for no money down to get into like managing an Airbnb would be through co-hosting, and you can co-host someone else's property. I mean, I know a lot of people that have had major success in growing their co-host business and then taking their cash flow and then starting to invest in properties and buying their own.

Chris Koerner (0:57)

So co-hosting is like being a property manager on steroids. Like you're more involved but you're making more money, right?

Kyle Miklasz (1:03)

I know some people that have gotten 10, 20 co-host clients in as short as six months. Co-hosting is a great way to get into the industry. Once I figured that out, the entire strategy of the company changed.

Chris Koerner (1:16)

Meet Kyle. Kyle spent a decade grinding away at corporate jobs at Coca-Cola and Nestle and then he blew it all up. His savings, lines of credit, 401K, he went all in on a beat up dairy farm from the 1800s. This wasn't just any barn. This barn was down the road from his grandparents' place in Wisconsin, where he used to spend summers with his 21 cousins. Now his dream was to give that same experience to other families and make a profit while doing so. He bought a barn that nobody wanted in a town that nobody had ever heard of, and then the craziest part about all this, he spent 500 bucks promoting one Instagram reel with zero followers, and made $80,000 before he ever opened. Yes, 500 bucks to Instagram with no experience with content or Instagram or anything, and he turned that 500 into $80,000 before opening. Now he's got 15 of these unique Airbnbs. So if you don't have the money to buy an Airbnb, fear not because we talk about co-hosting at the end, which is a way to do what he does without having to buy your own Airbnb. No, it's not that scammy Airbnb arbitrage that you see those course gurus talk about. You're going to love it. So Kyle, are you confident that by the end of this episode, people will have enough information to get started in short-term rentals?

Kyle Miklasz (2:30)

Absolutely.

Chris Koerner (2:31)

Even if they don't have a ton of money?

Kyle Miklasz (2:32)

Absolutely.

Chris Koerner (2:33)

All right. If you had like three sentences to describe what makes your Airbnbs, your short-term rentals different, what are they?

Kyle Miklasz (2:40)

Yeah, I think we create some of the most immersive, experiential hospitality destinations in the country. And I think what we do differently is we're not just opening up another Airbnb or a place to sleep.

We're creating experiences because people don't just want to travel for a place to sleep, they want to travel for an experience and to create memories. So once I figured that out, the entire strategy of the company changed, that we wanted to create experiences and memorable things that people wanted to share with people. They're not going to send you a picture of a cool couch they sat on in Airbnb or where they slept in a bedroom. They'll send you a picture of the indoor petting zoo or the helipad that they got picked up on in their backyard for a sky tour or an indoor pool that has a swim up bar and a rock climb wall. We started focusing very heavily on the guest experience and heavily investing in amenities in the properties that we were building and that we knew were going to A, go viral on social media, but also B, create these things that we're inventing and innovating in the space instead of just copycatting another operator out there. Because you go to a place like the Smokies, you'll see thousands of cabins, they all use the same amenities and they do the same thing. We wanted to be different. We wanted to create new things that people were going to stop their scroll and travel across the country to stay at.