Best way to work with management clients (Ep583)

During this engaging conversation, I had the privilege of chatting with David Curtis, the founder of WeHost Canada and an adept property manager. Our discussion provided a comprehensive overview of the intricate world of short-term rental management, touching on essential strategies and insights for success.

David began by sharing his personal evolution, moving from a co-hosting model to establishing WeHost Canada as a prominent property management company. He emphasized the crucial role of transparent contracts and agreements with clients to facilitate effective collaborations and minimize potential disputes. Open communication and setting clear expectations emerged as key practices to ensure a harmonious working relationship.

A pivotal shift David discussed was his transition from co-hosting to directly managing properties on his account via a Property Management System (PMS). This switch empowered him to deliver an elevated level of service, ensure consistent branding, and mitigate potential risks associated with the co-hosting approach.

Fee structures also emerged as a critical topic, with David advocating for a management fee structured around gross rental revenue. While acknowledging that industry norms vary across markets, David emphasized the importance of appropriately valuing services. Prioritizing exceptional value and an outstanding guest experience should inform fee decisions.

The conversation explored the significance of cultivating a distinct brand identity, particularly within the short-term rental niche. David underscored WeHost Canada's specialization in inner city family homes, notably in St. John's, Newfoundland. These uniquely designed Jelly Bean Row style homes have garnered popularity among travelers.

David extended an invitation to fellow professionals and enthusiasts to connect and learn from his experiences. He underscored the value of mutual support and growth within the community. Interested individuals can reach out to David directly at David@wehostcanada.ca or explore the listings and services provided by WeHost Canada at their website,
https://www.wehostcanada.ca.

In conclusion, my conversation with David Curtis offered a treasure trove of insights into short-term rental property management. From emphasizing transparent agreements and effective communication to advocating for a hands-on management model and fostering a strong brand identity, David's journey is a testament to the boundless opportunities within the industry.

Jasper Ribbers:
What's up everybody. Welcome back to Get Paid For Your Pad episode 583. Today my guest is David Curtis. He is the founder and CEO of We Host, a property management company out of Canada, he's in different markets, about 30 units under management. And today we're going to talk about how do you structure a management deal with clients? So for everybody out there who's currently managing properties for others, or if you're interested in doing that in the future, then pay attention because David is going to share. a lot of wisdom here around how do you create an offer? Like what percentage do you charge? How do you communicate with your clients? How to work with clients in general. So David, welcome to the show.

David Curtis:
Yeah, thanks for having me Jasper first off. I want to say that super honored and Excited to be on the podcast. I've been listening to this podcast for a long time now I'd say probably like four years or so So yeah, I'm excited to be here

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome, dude. I'm happy to have you. We've been working together for a while now for Legends X, and it's been a pleasure. So I'm excited to dig a little deeper here into your business. Why don't you give us a quick background of how you got started with Airbnb and how you expanded it to the 30 units that you're managing now.

David Curtis:
Yeah, sure. Yeah, my name is David. I'm the CEO and founder of We Host. I've been doing it since or managing short-term rentals since 2016 when I bought my first condo and then we've managed to attain 30 listings from then to now and the majority of the listings that we have are… in St. John's in Newfoundland where I'm from. And then we have the rest in Calgary and Edmonton, where my managing or director of operations is from. And yeah, we've managed to build this business all the while, building a house, having two kids, getting married and working my full-time job still.

Jasper Ribbers:
Oh wow,

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
where do you find the time? Do you sleep at all or?

David Curtis:
Yeah, I do work a lot, but yeah, it's been great so far. I enjoy it. It doesn't seem like work to me.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. And so that first home that you bought, you bought it in 2016. You said like, what was that in St. John's?

David Curtis:
No, this was in Calgary.

Jasper Ribbers:
Okay.

David Curtis:
So I bought a condo in Calgary and I was working a seven on, seven off shift. So on my seven days off, I would rent it out on Airbnb and I got good at renting it from a long distance, I guess, because I'd be up north. So then I bought another property in St. John's, Newfoundland, where I'm from. Yeah, it just snowballed from there and people started asking me for help. And yeah, so we've been really, you know, started we host and the past three years we've been really focusing on growth and, uh, you know, creating systems and really building the business. Um, so, um, I'm super excited to and proud of where we're at today.

Jasper Ribbers:
And did you, the units that you have now, as mostly through word of mouth, or were you actively doing marketing to get more units?

David Curtis:
Well, I think most of them are through referrals, but initially I went on, I scoured across all the rental listings in our areas and reached out to hosts. I put in a lot of work reaching out to people and that's how we grabbed our first few clients and then from there it was just all referrals. So… Right now, that's one of our main initiatives to work on marketing and kind of build that up a little bit so that we can target across Canada like our goal.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right on.

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
And so when you say a lot of referrals, do you offer

David Curtis:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
your clients a referral fee to incentivize them? Or?

David Curtis:
Yeah, we have a referral fee. We've tried out numerous. We change it up and we'll probably change it up again in the future. But some people give a better percentage on the management fee for referrals. I've heard of people taking off 1% each time they get a referral. We were doing something similar to that before and down to like a minimum of 15%. And then we switch to just giving a $250 referral fee each time we get a referral. So that's what we're doing right now, which

Jasper Ribbers:
Well

David Curtis:
works

Jasper Ribbers:
you found-

David Curtis:
pretty good. We've getting a few referrals. I love getting referrals because it's the best compliment, right, that you can get from a client.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, 100%. So let's dive into the management side and specifically what kind of offer. Because there's lots of different ways to charge clients, right? There's companies that have a very low management percentage of like 10% to 15%, but then there's all sorts of fees that they put on top of that.

David Curtis:
Right.

Jasper Ribbers:
There's companies that charge

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
like 30%, and there's so many ways to structure it. And I know this is something that you've… You kind of been trying to figure out recently of like what works best for you. So, yeah, give us some behind the scenes of like, what are you currently charging and like, how did you get to this, to the

David Curtis:
Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
offer?

David Curtis:
so basically what I found is there's like two real popular models. And the first one being charging your management fee or applying your management fee on the gross rental revenue. And then the other being charging it on the net. And what that means is the gross on like you're including the cleaning fees and, you know, and then the net would be excluding the cleaning fees. For us, you know, the finding the right model was a complete trial and error. You know, we've changed it numerous times in the past and we'll probably change it again in the future. But, you know, the… The main competition for us, I guess, for clients when we first started out was long-term renting. People were always comparing it to short-term rentals to long-term rentals. A lot of the cases, there's not as many fees with the long-term rentals. There's no taxes in Canada, like sales tax. when we say gross rental revenue, we still take out the taxes and Airbnb service fees. Like we don't apply the management fee to that because the client never sees it anyways, right? So that's the two that we have used in the past. And right now I like putting it on the gross, applying it to, you know, Any type of rental revenue that you get from the listing, that's the money that you've made from it, right? A lot of the times the clients will ask about the cleaning fee, but the cleaning fee is almost more of a way to keep track of and making sure that you have enough money to pay the cleaners, pay for cleaning supplies and so on. Even toiletries if you want to work that in there. It's easier and simple as well. So say if you charge like 30% of gross rental revenue and you take care of the toiletries and some supplies, you know, that's super easy for the client to understand. And it's also easier for you to develop the invoice or owner statement. So that's what I like right now. And yeah, like I said, it was all trial and error. Once you get into buying supplies and putting it on the invoices, it does get a little bit time consuming. So just putting it on the gross is definitely more efficient, I think.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. It saves time on the creating the owner statements because that's, that's a challenge that a lot of hosts have

David Curtis:
It's

Jasper Ribbers:
is

David Curtis:
a big

Jasper Ribbers:
like,

David Curtis:
bottleneck. Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
right.

David Curtis:
It's every month. I dread doing it because it takes so long. It's like you're so focused on the guest experience. You're focused on providing value to your clients and then invoice time comes and it takes a lot of your time.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. So that's another reason to kind of keep the, the offer very simple, right? Or

David Curtis:
That's

Jasper Ribbers:
the

David Curtis:
right,

Jasper Ribbers:
way that you

David Curtis:
yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
charge your guests or your clients very simple. So that, cause

David Curtis:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
that cuts the amount of time that you have to spend on creating

David Curtis:
100%

Jasper Ribbers:
those

David Curtis:
yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
statements.

David Curtis:
make

Jasper Ribbers:
So you

David Curtis:
sure

Jasper Ribbers:
mentioned,

David Curtis:
it's clear

Jasper Ribbers:
yeah, and then there's the clearer it is. It's easier to understand. Because I think that's a good point that you're making. Because from our side, everything makes sense. It's like

David Curtis:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
there's a reason why we charge a certain way and why we take the cleaning fee and then charge the percentage. So we charge over what we call net from channel. So literally,

David Curtis:
Hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
whatever we receive. Well, however way you do it, like there's a reason why you're doing it a certain way, but the client, like they might not understand that, right? So there's some education there to the client as well, I think. And I know you've mentioned, you changed things up a couple of times. Typically when you change things, like some clients will ask questions or they might not like it, right? How do you

David Curtis:
Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
deal with that?

David Curtis:
well the biggest… yeah you have to just make sure that you're super clear and right from the get-go when you have a new client to go through everything with a Fontu comb and make sure that it's you know have a good client agreement contract with everything laid out super simple with even calculations showing how you calculate your management fee. But what we've been doing now to, like we've changed everything in our business, we implemented a new PMS and went from the co-hosting model to where we have all the listings under our own company account, which is way better for the business, way better for the client. But, so what we've done… And I highly recommend this to anybody that's considering doing the management model. You have to have a clear process, I guess, or procedure on how to communicate with your clients every month. Have a 30 minute sit down, zoom call or something like that, at least, or have it scheduled and then you can go over any type of concerns or questions they have. But with us, I've sent out a couple emails explaining the whole situation and how we're changing things. And then I've provided a calendly link for the client so they can book a client strategy call. And once they book that, we go over everything and I can share my screen and show them how it's all going to look going forward, which has been really good and helpful. And then some clients are hard to get a hold of. you know, everybody's busy. So, you know, a couple times it's hard to schedule. So what I've done with that is, you know, you can just go on and make a Loom video, go through everything that you wanna go through with them and then you can send it to them. And that's been really effective as well. They

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm.

David Curtis:
really do appreciate that in my experience.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. And is it, when it comes to the actual percentage that you're charging, and so you keep it pretty simple, like, are there any additional fees that you charge or do you keep it very clean with the percentage?

David Curtis:
Initially, we didn't charge any startup fee because we were doing the co-hosting model. What we would do is we'd get a new client and we'd send them the referral link. We'd get a little bit of a kickback from Airbnb and then we would use that to pay for our time to get everything up and running. Airbnb is usually pretty… generous with their referral, especially now. I've noticed it's gone up quite a bit, but now that we've moved to put everything onto our business account, we have some fees that we have charged. And so now we do charge a software fee. It's pretty reasonable though, it's $150 a year. And then some basic things that we want all of our listings to have. So we put in a… standard or a mandatory, I think it's like $300 for the smart lock that we use. Just to make sure that, you know, we have that same smart lock at all of our properties because we found that it's the best smart lock to use.

Jasper Ribbers:
Which one is that

David Curtis:
And

Jasper Ribbers:
by the way?

David Curtis:
it's the Yale Assure Smart Lock. Yale Assure Smart Lock 2. Now they have a better one. It's great. it integrates with your listing and your, it's really good for security too. So we use that and then we have, we just outline the cleaning fee, the hourly rate of our cleaners, because initially you'll have to go into the property and you don't know how dirty it's gonna be and it's hard to just give a flat fee for that. So we'll. We'll just say the hourly, however long. Usually they're pretty reasonable, but sometimes you come into a house and it's just a mess and you really gotta spend some time there. And let me just see, what else do we have on there? I think that's basically it. And then we also have a $100 per device installation fee as well.

Jasper Ribbers:
Got

David Curtis:
Like

Jasper Ribbers:
it.

David Curtis:
if they want us to do doorbells.

Jasper Ribbers:
And you mentioned you initially you're doing the co-hosting model, right? Where you basically your co-host on their Airbnb listing, all the money goes straight to your clients and then every month you invoice them for your fee.

David Curtis:
Right.

Jasper Ribbers:
And now you've switched to, you have your company Airbnb accounts, all the listings are on there.

David Curtis:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
Um, and then you're collecting all the money. And then at the end of the month, you sent your client, uh, their part, correct? So what, why did you switch from that one model to the other model?

David Curtis:
Um, we switched, uh, the, originally we wanted to do the cohosting thing because we were starting out, we wanted people to, you know, uh, trust us and make sure that, you know, they're okay with us, um, managing their property. And, um, what we found, there's a lot of complications as being, with being a cohost, um, and there's a lot of applications that you're unable to use as a cohost. Um, so, you know, dealing with Airbnb resolution and one thing is, is difficult because they won't even call you as a co-host. They'll call the owner and they have a new policy now where if they don't get a, get a hold of you in an hour, they could refund the guests completely just based on a complaint. Um, so the resolution center is one big thing. And then revenue management, um, there's applications that you can use. Um, that helps with increasing the listings position on Airbnb, you can't use that as a co-host. And the biggest thing is using a property management software where you can create listings, like say if you wanna create, like you have a two apartment home and you wanna create another listing for it, just ease of being able to do that without having to. get the listing admin or the client to go on there and do it because a lot of them, a lot of the clients aren't familiar with it, right? So it takes them a while. So the ease of that is definitely a big one. And then accounting, owner statements becomes available. We're setting, I have that all set up now. So it's all automated and clear. for the client, they'll get it every, the 15th of every month. I'm super happy about that. And then, yeah, just the overall management across different OTAs. So you can list on BRBO, booking.com, Google, you know, and the biggest thing that I'm super excited about is our own direct booking website. So how you structure the pricing can change too. So if a client, if you're doing the cohosting thing, with a lot of the Airbnb, I'm not sure how Airbnb changes this or when they changed it for hosts, but the simplified pricing. So we pay the entire service fee. And we do that because it's an expense. And if you pay all the expense on your side, that… you can use that for tax purposes, right? You can write it off. If the guest is paying for it, it's not your expense, right? It's the guest's expense. Either way, it's coming off the price of the reservation. So we just switched it over to our side, it's our expense, and we just altered our pricing so that it's still the same price per night, right? So that's another good quality. And… So when you have that simplified, I think it's like 15%, the service fee, that comes out of your side. And then when you put it on, say, your direct booking website, you can use the same prices on your pricing software so that you can manage it all. And then if somebody books on your direct booking website, you're automatically, it's the same price, you might offer like a 5%. discount or something like that, but you're making more money on it, right? If they book with the direct booking because there's no Airbnb service fee, right? But

Jasper Ribbers:
Hmm

David Curtis:
yeah, that's some of the advantages. I know I've missed a few, but yeah, it's so much better as a manager to have it under your own account.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. Yeah. You're in control of the money too. Right. So you don't have to wait for,

David Curtis:
Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
for cashflow

David Curtis:
and that's another big

Jasper Ribbers:
purposes.

David Curtis:
thing too. Yeah, because we were floating so much of the cleaning fees, right? We have, you know, 30 listings and it was, you know, sometimes at first we would bill for cleaning the month after. So we were always, like say, if we were invoicing for June, we were paying for the cleaning fees for May. And so now we've caught it all up. So if we're… Invoicing or we were invoicing for June we were paying for a cleaning fees in June But now with it all under our own account We take all the expenses out and then what the client gets is what was what they? What their profit is essentially right it's always nicer to like pay out the money as opposed to you know, asking for Money we find you know, it's which is a better process.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, this way you don't have to chase clients for to pay your invoices, actually.

David Curtis:
Yeah, yes, some are quicker than others. And but yeah, and have more questions. Was one thing that I think if for anybody, one piece of device is to make sure that like I said, everything is clear. How you're spending the money on supplies and who's paying for that has to be super clear. If you're if your clients. asking a bunch of questions and surprised about something, that means there's a flaw in the system that you have and there wasn't something properly communicated.

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
Are there any disadvantages of switching to the model you're using now?

David Curtis:
Switch the disadvantages to mean like the model, the management fee model, or do you mean having it under the company?

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, just having all the Airbnb listings under your company account, managing the money, like the way you set it up now. Like you mentioned, there's a lot of advantages

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
versus the closed model. But what are some disadvantages?

David Curtis:
One thing that comes to mind is reviews and dealing with, say if something happens where a client has to cancel a booking or take the property off, then that's a disadvantage because it's under our account and we could risk having penalties and losing super host status. So that's something that we have to manage going forward. And then say if you have a property that's not performing well, and say if there's something that is broken down, like an AC unit and the client doesn't want to repair it or is not repairing it for whatever reason, then it's damaging your reputation on your account, right? So it could

Jasper Ribbers:
Yep.

David Curtis:
bring down your rating.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah.

David Curtis:
That's the only disadvantages that come to mind right now.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. And it used

David Curtis:
I don't

Jasper Ribbers:
to

David Curtis:
know

Jasper Ribbers:
be the

David Curtis:
if you

Jasper Ribbers:
case

David Curtis:
can think

Jasper Ribbers:
that,

David Curtis:
of any.

Jasper Ribbers:
yeah, no, I mean, I think this was kind of what I was getting at. And it used to be the case that one cancellation will cost you your SuperHole status, right?

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
They've now changed that, fortunately, because it was such a stupid rule, in my opinion. For one cancellation, just lose your status, I think, was a bit extreme. Now they changed it to 1%. Your cancellation rate has to be below 1%, right?

David Curtis:
Right.

Jasper Ribbers:
So yeah, if you get the occasional cancellation, it's not the end of the world. You're not losing your

David Curtis:
day.

Jasper Ribbers:
super host status. But no, it's definitely a concern. I think there's a risk factor as well. For whatever reason, God forbid that Airbnb would ever decide to deactivate your account or pause your account for whatever reason, then

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
it would affect all your listings. But at the same time, And you mentioned the disadvantage too is like, yeah, if you have, let's say you have a client who, uh, you know, doesn't keep up in sort of repairs or like, you know, hard to communicate with or whatever that is, it's now going to affect your, your company account, but at the same time, that's also a driver to, to really like think about like, who do we want to work with and really set our standards, right?

David Curtis:
Yeah, 100%. That's super important to make sure you're clear again, right from the get go when you meet your potential clients, or when you're going through the contract, or you can even have some type of verbiage in the contract about it. But you have to be clear that you're in the business of providing quality experiences to guests. the client has to have that goal as well and want to help you with providing that. So, you know, if the AC unit is broken and it's, you know, 40 degrees out or something, and they don't wanna fix it, or if there's some type of furniture that is broken down and they're not replacing it, it's just gonna cause a lot of headaches and it's gonna make your business look bad as well, right? People are going to look at the brand and see that, oh, stay there and have a bad experience at a WeOist property. It's not something that we want. So it's definitely something that we have a conversation about right away. And I think our clients right now are all pretty good about that

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
for sure.

Jasper Ribbers:
Did you get

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
any pushback from any of your clients when you switched from cohost into the way you do it now?

David Curtis:
I wouldn't say pushback. I would just say a lot of questions. I do, you know, it's better for the client. I think they're going to make more money for sure. And the direct booking website, if we can grow that up to say, you know, 20% or more of our bookings, it's just going to mean more money for the client, right? The service fee, the money that we're saving from the service fee, you know, we're not taking any service fee from the direct booking. I think the only service fee that we'll have to charge is the payment. So the Stripe fee

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
basically, right?

Jasper Ribbers:
Yep.

David Curtis:
But we're passing that all on to the client. So, um, yeah, I think we haven't had no pushback yet. There's a couple of clients that we still have our strategy call with, but no pushback so far, just a lot

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
of questions to make sure they. They understand, you know, what's changing and that's something that I made clear right away. I've sent out an email you know with a Like not a amendment but a picture of our the specific sections of our contract that's changing right and highlighted, you know The money is going to be deposited in our account first then we pay you out on the 15th of every month with their owner statements, so And you know what, that's how traditionally all property managers work in the long-term market, right?

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
So it's nothing new. It's just, you know, I feel like the co-hosting model is something that started with, you know, Airbnb. It's kind of, Airbnb gave birth to that. And it's something that you almost, most people just start with and then they realize the complications to it. And then as they grow… they move into something more like this

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
when they become a like a bonafide company.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, I think one reason that some people still opt for that co-hosting model is, you know, they'll, they'll find a client who's been doing Airbnb for a while. And, you know, the client has an Airbnb listing and has 200 reviews.

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
And then the client would say like, Hey, I already have this Airbnb listing. There were 200 reviews. It doesn't make sense to start a new Airbnb listing, right? You ever get that feedback or?

David Curtis:
Yeah, that's a question that we have a lot. What if you have somebody that comes with a listing with a bunch of reviews and they want you to manage it? It doesn't bother me. I'm not too concerned with having to say to the client, we… We'll no longer, we won't be using that listing. We'll be creating a new listing under our brand because their listing could be a completely different thing. Once it's under our management, it's our brand, it's our way of doing things. So it's almost a start fresh, right? And the argument about that would be, what about traffic? But you know… I've created lots of listings and I've seen the boost that new listings get on Airbnb. So I'm not too concerned with that. But yeah, we'll be starting all the listings under the company account going forward. But I can understand why people do the co-hosting thing for that. But some states and some provinces, the co-hosting model is something people have to do because they're not able to have. it under their own account due to licensing

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
and regulation. So in some states and some provinces, you have to have a Realtors License to handle the money side of things. And if you have it under your company account, you're handling the money. If you have it under the co-hosting, if you're doing the co-hosting model, you're not handling all the money. The money is going to the client and then they're handling it. So that's one workaround I've heard. for that as well.

Jasper Ribbers:
So how is that in Canada? Is that different in different states, or is that the same across the

David Curtis:
Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
whole country?

David Curtis:
so yeah, it's like that. I think it's province to province.

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm.

David Curtis:
It's different. I think in Ontario, you have to have a Realtors license. And the same thing in BC. In Newfoundland, you do not. And in Alberta, you do. So we do have some co-hosting accounts still in Alberta.

Jasper Ribbers:
Okay, yeah, because I was going to, that's

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
the, my next question was going to be, is it defined as to where your company is located, where you're registered, or

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
is it where the listing is located?

David Curtis:
That's where the listing's located. And I was just thinking about it now. I think we have just one client in Alberta and the rest are still mass releases. So that's another way that you can still host in Alberta without having a Realtors license,

Jasper Ribbers:
Right.

David Curtis:
is through the mass releasing.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. And I guess

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
I don't know. This is just kind of thinking out loud, but like is there is

David Curtis:
Mm.

Jasper Ribbers:
there a way to let's say you have a client who's in one of those states and so you want it and so you have to do the master lease, right? I guess you could still

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
calculate what they would have earned as a as a management client and then just kind of adjust the monthly rent based on that.

David Curtis:
Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
Is it?

David Curtis:
I thought about that. It's funny you say that because I have thought about that in previous, like you could set up some type of contract, almost like a tenancy agreement with some type of, I don't know, what you call a profit sharing or something like that.

Jasper Ribbers:
Honestly, this is the first time this has come to my mind. I was just thinking about it as you were talking through it.

David Curtis:
I've thought about that. I don't think I would like to do that because we're taking all the risk. I feel like on the mass releasing side of it,

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah,

David Curtis:
I'm

Jasper Ribbers:
that's true.

David Curtis:
not a big fan of the mass releasing anymore.

Jasper Ribbers:
Not very many people

David Curtis:
I know

Jasper Ribbers:
are.

David Curtis:
you guys aren't really keen on it either. Um, so we're generally just sticking to management now going forward and ownership.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. It makes

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
sense. Makes sense.

David Curtis:
The goal, uh, eventually is, you know, boutique hotel type of style.

Jasper Ribbers:
So

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
tell us a little bit more about the brand we host. Is that important? Are you focused on really building that brand?

David Curtis:
Yeah, we're super focused on it. That's why we called it WeHoast. We wanted to keep it open so that you can use it in any province or anywhere. The main idea from WeHoast came from me being in Alberta and being from Newfoundland and managing from the west to east coast type of That's where we host came from. It's kind of a double meaning. Uh, but what property we focus on is inner city family homes. Most of our, most of our, about three bedrooms, three bedrooms. And, um, so that's predominantly what we focus on inner city. We didn't do too much of, you know, even through COVID, a lot of people got really, or the country stays, I guess, rural got really popular, but we still focused on growing our inner city because we figured it was going to bounce back with a vegans,

Jasper Ribbers:
Hehehehe

David Curtis:
which it did in 2022. It was just an amazing year. But yeah, that's what we're focusing on, providing quality stays for traveling families that are either visiting to visit their family or visiting for project or work type travel. That's most of our clients now. So yeah, it's been going pretty good. I'm super happy that things are going the way they are. It seems like we're building momentum.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. That's awesome. Yeah. I've noticed that over the last couple of months. See you making a lot of changes and really leading everything in a positive direction. So it's been great to kind of follow that journey.

David Curtis:
Yeah, I've been working a lot. Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
I know, I know.

David Curtis:
But, uh, yeah, it's, I really like, um, the, why we started focusing on St. John's Newfoundland, um, is because we really, I really love that city and the houses there are super unique. Um, They have the Jelly Bean Row style homes. I don't know if you ever heard of those or looked at some of my listings, but they're all very colorful

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
homes, all on a hill that goes down to the harbor. And I think the history of it is, you know, boats coming in, it's so foggy in St. John's, super foggy, it's called Fog City. And they'd look up and they can see their… their house, right? Their pink house or their blue house.

Jasper Ribbers:
Makes sense.

David Curtis:
And then just got that name, you know, Jelly Bean, Roast All Homes. And people love them. It's a big tourist attraction. I think it's, I think it's one of the best kept secrets in Canada, that St. John's City. So

Jasper Ribbers:
Not anymore.

David Curtis:
we're super happy to be growing there. I think, I think we have like 16 or 19 listings there now. So

Jasper Ribbers:
Right on. Yeah. I have to come visit.

David Curtis:
yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
Like we have somebody else that's in our community

David Curtis:
Yeah, you should.

Jasper Ribbers:
who's also in St. John's, which is interesting because it's a small place, right?

David Curtis:
Yeah, it's probably. say 500,000 people in the province and I'd say 200,000, something like that in St. John's

Jasper Ribbers:
Right.

David Curtis:
itself.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah.

David Curtis:
So it's a small city, but the tourism is pretty strong. We get a lot of Europeans and a lot of Americans coming up, especially from, there's a play called Come From Away that was, is about what happened in 9-11 when all the planes got routed to a place in Newfoundland called Gander. It was just how Newfoundlanders showed so much hospitality and they made a play about it. It was number one on Broadway for a long time. So it was a great attractor,

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm.

David Curtis:
for sure.

Jasper Ribbers:
All right. Uh, one last question. Um, this might be a difficult one, but, uh, aside,

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
aside of outside of everything we've already talked about, like if somebody's listening to this podcast right now and things, you know what? I'm going to get into management. What's, what would be your

David Curtis:
Yes.

Jasper Ribbers:
number one piece of advice?

David Curtis:
Um, clarity and I think I've said it so many times in this podcast already, but you know, never, never manage somebody else's property without a agreement and contract in place. Um, don't just willy nilly start managing somebody else's property and really think about, you know, how are you going to communicate with the client going forward and in your contract. detail every type of expense and who's responsible for it. Like I said, if you give them an invoice, however you're doing it, if you're doing the co-hosting or if you're doing all the listings on your management account, they shouldn't be surprised by anything. So that's the biggest. advice I would say to have is to have a clear contract with everything, including any type of expense so that it's clear.

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

David Curtis:
And then I would say right away have it under, I wouldn't even do the co-hosting model anymore. I would just start right away with using a PMS and then have it under your account and then that way. It's easier for you to manage and more effective and you can ultimately provide the best value that way.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. Makes sense.

David Curtis:
Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
So if people want to,

David Curtis:
And yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
yeah, last one.

David Curtis:
No, no, go ahead.

Jasper Ribbers:
I was going to say, if people are interested in traveling to newfound land, and in particular St. John's, or the other places where you host, where can people find you? Or if people want to work with you as a management client.

David Curtis:
Yeah, wehostcanada.ca is our website. You can go on there, see our listings, send us a message and we can hook you up with a jelly bean roll at home. And also you can reach out to me at David at wehostcanada.ca directly. I also want to mention too, you know, I've said this to you before, but listening to this podcast, I've learned so much and I really want to keep the culture going. So, I've told you that I've reached out to people that have been on your podcast and they've helped me with my business and gave me and even gave me walkthroughs, got hopped on calls for no cost. I want to keep that going. So if anybody has a question or needs help with their business or… anything like that, I'm free to help and kind of pay it forward. So definitely reach out to me, David at wehostcanada.ca. And with anything, you know, any type of process with your cleaning or if there's a some type of bottleneck you're going through, I can definitely help you out with that because yeah, it's super, it's great when you're going through something that's racking your brain and then. somebody is just there to walk you through it and help you because they've done it before, you know. So yeah, I definitely want to pay it forward.

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome, man. Appreciate that. So, uh, well, if you're listening, you have a challenge. Take advantage. David that we host Canada.co

David Curtis:
Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
is it.

David Curtis:
free stuff.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. Yeah. No, that's awesome to hear that, uh, that you reached out to some, some guys, I hear that more often. Actually. I mentioned that to you. Like, I think that's really cool that, uh, you know, people reach out to each other. And like, there's so many people that who just want to help out, right. Um,

David Curtis:
Mm-hmm

Jasper Ribbers:
which is, which is awesome to see.

David Curtis:
Yeah, yeah, I think he helped me with our cleaning process and it's something that we've been using ever since and it's great

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah.

David Curtis:
Yeah, we recommend it to others. It's it's awesome But yeah, just back to the model that we're using right now again, I just wanted to say Management model fee on gross rental revenue I think is

Jasper Ribbers:
It's the way to go.

David Curtis:
is where it's at right now. Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
Boom.

David Curtis:
And then figure out what percentage, I think it's anywhere from 20% to 30% right now. I've heard of 40% before. Have you ever heard of people charging 40%?

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, I mean, certain markets, you know, like certain like really high end markets where there's not a lot of operators, sometimes you see that. But it's I think, you know, and this is something that we spoke with, shout out to Lucas Krause, who was on the podcast and the CEO of Skyrun.

David Curtis:
Yes.

Jasper Ribbers:
And he came into our mastermind, I think you were on that call. And he said something that was very interesting on this on the topic of what what's your fee going to be? Because Cause he said, sometimes it's just kind of market dependent, right? Uh, you can't always

David Curtis:
Yes.

Jasper Ribbers:
like set your

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
own. You have to see like what's common in your marketplace. Uh, but definitely,

David Curtis:
100%.

Jasper Ribbers:
I think definitely the other takeaway from that was to like, don't, don't undercharge, right? Um, it's better to charge

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
a higher fee and deliver a world-class experience to your clients. In the end of the day, I think that model works better than trying to undercut the competition

David Curtis:
Mm.

Jasper Ribbers:
and trying to like, you know, charge, um,

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
a minimum. premium and be that be, let that be like the reason why people would choose you is just because you're the cheapest one versus like

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
delivering the best experience.

David Curtis:
I appreciated when he said, you don't want to be the low cost person, right? They want to be fairly compensated, I guess, for the level of service that they're providing. And I can totally get that. And if somebody did start off and say if you look at it and you're charging your clients well below market rate, it's not the end of the world. you can always change your fee going forward. Say, unfortunately, if you look at the numbers and it's hard to be profitable, like Lucas said, maybe you have a $100,000 business and you're profitable, but then you can have a million dollar business that's not profitable too, right? So if you look at it and it's just not working, you can go to your clients and just say, hey, you know… we're changing things up. We're gonna have to increase our management fee a little bit based on the numbers and hopefully that your clients will understand. But yeah, as long as you're providing the best service and the best value, I'm sure it'll be all good, right?

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I always think of, uh, I had a business mentor at one time and he told me a very important lesson he said, uh, Give people what you want and they'll pay for it. Right. So

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
it's, I like the mindset of saying, thinking like, okay, let me, let me focus on what my clients, this is true for any business, right? How do I give

David Curtis:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
my clients what they want? Right. And, and then if you do that, like you can charge, you know, higher, um, higher fees for it.

David Curtis:
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
Cool, man. Awesome.

David Curtis:
absolutely.

Jasper Ribbers:
Dude, I appreciate you

David Curtis:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
being on the podcast. I know this is your first podcast.

David Curtis:
Appreciate

Jasper Ribbers:
How did it

David Curtis:
you.

Jasper Ribbers:
go?

David Curtis:
Yeah, it was my first podcast ever. Um, yeah, it was good. I, I'm super again, honored for you to ask me on here. I was, I remember saying Sam, my wife, you know, like, yeah, I'd love to be on that podcast someday. And here I am. So

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, there you go. All

David Curtis:
yeah,

Jasper Ribbers:
right.

David Curtis:
it's been great.

Jasper Ribbers:
Sweet dude.

David Curtis:
Appreciate it again.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. And to the listeners, hope you learned something from this episode and we'll be back another time with the next episode. So we'll see you soon.

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