12 Aug Passive Airbnb turned 4 years old this week

Passive Airbnb turned 4

4 years is a big milestone. 4 years of high school. 4 years of college. And no doubt, 4 years is a long time in a life of a human.

For me, 4 years is a turning point. I’ve learned so much about starting, scaling, managing businesses. I won’t trade anything for the last 4 years.

In those 4 years, I also learned a few things about myself. What did I enjoy about starting a business? What did I not like? Of course, the pandemic played a large part in the strategy of my business. I largely stood aside and watched. There wasn’t anything I could do but watch from the sidelines. I had one thing – hopium. I hope things would eventually get better.

I’m really not sure what to write here.

My goal in starting this blog was to be helpful. To provide useful information. Would it be nice for me to sum up my last 4 years? Yes, I think that’d be good to show you my process!

The first 6 months

I was grinding hard. I knew consistency + execution = results – the art of hustling was very well alive.

If you didn’t know, I was building 2 businesses simultaneously: my Airbnb units and my Passive Airbnb blog. The Airbnb business was getting predictable because I knew how many emails I had to set to get an appointment. I knew the kind of P&L that I needed before I commit to a unit. I knew how to outsource. I had my system down.

The tricky business was my blog. My goal from the very beginning was to break down information and help people that were stuck in their careers. My goal was to help people start another income stream. In those 6 months, I pushed out content as often and as helpful as I could. I needed to establish myself as an “expert.” I needed to get my name out there.

I remember how ugly my blog was when I first started. It wasn’t slick or sexy. It was functional. It was my MVP. I knew people would come as long as I was producing helpful content.

That was exactly what I did.

6 – 24 months

My blog didn’t make any money in those first 7 months. I was supporting my blog through the income that I generated from my units.

I didn’t even think about making money in the first 6 months. Eventually, I started to sell digital products like my premium e-course and templates.

I learned that if I wanted to grow my Passive Airbnb business, I needed to hire people. I needed to outsource. That was something I learned from starting my Airbnb business.

Those 12 months were probably one of the hardest times. I was managing 4 people at the peak of this growth: SEO specialist, writer, executive assistance, and my Airbnb co-host. My responsibility of one suddenly multiplied to four.

I hired, fired, then hired again. One of those things that I had to learn on the fly. It was one of those “black box” experiences that no one talked about. I remember reading so many business books on hiring and managing but they weren’t applicable to my situation. No one was talking about how to grow a business from a remote-first culture. I could only draw parallels and that was the extent of how helpful those books were.

24-36 months

This pandemic threw a huge wrench in my way. I was one of the millions of people that were thrown in a fire and no end in sight… Everything was kind of blurry because it happened so fast. I remember feeling lonely because I didn’t have anyone who would understand my struggles.

36 – 48 months

I decreased my payroll to keep my businesses afloat. I got rid of some of my older units. I got rid of my less profitable units all in the hopes of saving enough capital to fight for another day once the pandemic died down.

We’re in the last phase of this. I have a good feeling about it. Do I have any regrets? Sure. Some. Did I make mistakes? Yes. Did I learn from those mistakes? Yes, but not all. I learned that it was okay to give up “perfection” and settle for good enough. It was better to get it out into the world than perfect it over an ever-moving goalpost.

That’s all I got. I wish you a happy beginning.