How Emmanuel Co-hosts Hundreds of Properties at Jetstream Property Management

Quick Summary

Emmanuel and Jeremy explore strategies for managing and scaling a co-hosting or short-term rental (STR) property management business, focusing on a tech-driven approach. Emmanuel from Jetstream shares insights into leveraging technology, partnerships, and operational efficiency to manage hundreds of properties effectively. The importance of quality service, strategic client selection, and consistent guest experience is emphasized.

Key Points

• Use a tech-first approach to streamline operations, from guest communication to pricing and bookings. Integrate tools like API connections with platforms (e.g., Airbnb, Vrbo) to automate processes and maintain consistency across multiple properties.
• Partner with local operators (e.g., Realtors, cleaners) who bring on-the-ground expertise while the central team manages technology, call centers, and pricing. Empower partners by providing training and resources to elevate their service quality.
• Use metrics like photos, pricing, and reviews (CPPR framework) to optimize listing performance and guest satisfaction. Educate property owners on best practices to align their expectations with market realities, ensuring long-term partnerships.
• Work with Realtors, cleaning companies, and local service providers to expand services while maintaining quality. Use white-label solutions to allow partners to operate under their own brand while benefiting from centralized support.

Full Transcript

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Jeremy: What's up? We are live with the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast. We are here in Anaheim, California, at the National Association of Realtors conference. I'm sitting by my guy, Emanuel, who's coming here from Canada. He has built himself a very, very large vacation rental management co-host portfolio and done just a bunch of other things in the short-term rental space. Really, a pioneer—he's been in this game for a long time and has a lot of knowledge he's going to be sharing with us today.

Emanuel, thanks so much for joining us.

Emmanuel: Well, thank you for having me. We just met not very long ago, so this is exciting.

Jeremy: Yeah, we probably actually met... I went up to his booth—he was like one of the two companies that I wanted to talk to—and I walked up to his booth, and we realized... My girlfriend has these fancy mics that make it so people can hear us right now with all the noise, and we decided to rip it. So, here we are.

Yes, tell me: how did you get going in the short-term rental game? And how did you grow the portfolio you’ve got today?

Emmanuel: Yeah, it's a long story, so I'm going to keep it short. We were lucky to be at the right place at the right time. We signed up resort management companies back in 2015-16 and built software to connect their tech to Airbnb and Vrbo. That's our legacy business. Today, it's still a large portfolio—it's about two-thirds of our revenue. We work with some of the largest hotel companies that you would know: Marriott, Hilton, IHG, and others across the US, Canada, Europe, and England. So that's where we come from.

Jeremy: And you help these hotels transition to being also on Airbnb? Also on all the other platforms…

Emmanuel: Yeah, I connected their hotel tech, which is still very Expedia- and Booking.com-focused.

Jeremy: Sure.

Emmanuel: And then I take their rates and availability, all in real-time, through APIs, and then I push their inventory onto Airbnb and Vrbo. My team writes the content because a lot of them don't know how to write content that would, in any way, shape, or form, make sense on Airbnb.

Jeremy: Yeah, Emmanuel has had an interesting journey with his company, and he shared with me that you actually sold that "quote-unquote" legacy business prior to COVID and then bought it back. Tell me about that rollercoaster.

Emmanuel: Yeah, so we sold the business in 2018 to a company called Red Awning out of the US. They had raised $40 million for acquisitions, and we were their largest acquisition. So, good exit—everybody made money; investors made money.

Jeremy: And you got restless? You got bored?

Emmanuel: No, I... Yeah, no, it's really not what happened. I bought a sailboat in Fiji. I was going to go sailing the South Pacific for three years because life is short, and I wanted to enjoy life while, you know, while young. Uh, and then COVID hit.

It was a two-year earnout. We had to work for them contractually for two years, okay? And when the last payment was about to come in—it's just a small percentage of the acquisition—COVID came in, or happened, and they thought they were going to go bankrupt. You know, the first two weeks of COVID was like the end of humanity as we knew it.

Jeremy: Especially for hotels.

Emmanuel: Yes, exactly. So anyways, all this to say that we took the moment to approach them and say, 'You know what, guys? You now own this Canadian-European company. You don't know what to do with it. There's no more staff because you laid everybody off. Why don't we just take this off your hands and forget the last payment?'

Which is small. It's like $250,000. Which is not small! $250,000 is a lot of money!

Jeremy: No, no, no, come on. You don't have to be modest. He’s Canadian, so he's very, very modest.

Emmanuel: It’s by nature. Anyway, so yeah. So they took it, and we just got right in the nick of time because a week later, the PPE... What happened in the US? The PPE checks started flowing, and Red Awning got a big chunk of cash. So I think we caught them right at the right moment.

Jeremy: You acted quick.

Emmanuel: Oh, super quick.

Jeremy: When folks were scared, you said, "Hey, we can—we can figure this one out."

Emmanuel: When others are scared, be greedy. I wish I could take credit for this. Again, being Canadian... modest. It's actually my business partner who led that. Once the ball was in motion, I got on board, but initially, to be quite frank, I was scared, and I thought, 'Why would we do this? This is insane.’

Jeremy: But you did it.

Emmanuel: But we did it.

Jeremy: And then you built another business model?

Emmanuel: Correct. So, our expertise and our technology... So, now, like, we buy the business back. We've got these API integrations directly with Airbnb and Vrbo, which, as we were both talking about earlier, is hard to get.

Jeremy: I tried.

Emmanuel: Yes, it's very hard to get.

Jeremy: Airbnb, if you're listening, help us out, please!

Emmanuel: So, we have this global call center, and we have money flowing. Actually, as we both know, short-term rentals recovered fast, especially in the southern US. Thank God for the southern US for keeping us afloat during COVID.

Jeremy: You're welcome.

Emmanuel: Yes, really appreciated it. For real. We're so lucky in that way. And our Canadian government also gave us a pile of money—a lot of money, surprisingly—which is not good for our future taxes. But anyways, that happened.

All this to say, yeah. So, one of our customers... The way it all happened is one of our customers is a small real estate developer with a hotel in Mexico in Sayulita. Small, like 15 units. He was using us in the legacy business model, and he said, 'You know, guys, I like you. Could you kind of become my entire marketing solution—not just Airbnb and Vrbo—like, become my entire management solution.

And we're like, 'Well, yeah, in time.' So, it's been a three-year journey, and that's what we built. We've essentially migrated our technology from being just a channel manager for hotels to becoming the PMS fully in the short-term rental world.

But we don't sell just the tech like Hostaway or Guesty do. We always sell ourselves with our call center on top and with our revenue management team. So, we're like a full-service PMS, I guess, is the way you can describe us. There's not a lot of us in the industry doing that.

And that customer, Roger, by the way—shout out to Roger—he's still a customer, he's become a friend, and he's an investor in our company. And we're crushing it for Roger.

Jeremy: Let's go! All right, Roger.

Emmanuel: Yes!

Jeremy: So how many—so this initial business, you were working with large hotels, helping them connect via the Airbnb API directly to it and building your technology. So, you know, seamless, easy for them to know who's from Airbnb, who's from Booking.com, who's from their legacy hotel software?

Emmanuel: Yes.

Jeremy: And then this new business, which is, you know, full-service property management. Over the last couple of years, how many properties have you onboarded to your full-service management?

Emmanuel: Surprisingly, not as many as you think, only because it took us a good two years to build everything. So, I was onboarding, but I'll be very frank because this is a podcast, and we're sharing—we had a bit of churn early on because I was kind of selling this future vision, which, you know, as a classic CEO, optimism faulted like, 'Oh yeah, we got this.' Well, we didn’t quite have it.

So you can't fake that, ultimately. So now, three years in, we have it. We're at about 150 properties today, and that business segment is growing north of 100% year on year.

Jeremy: So you guys have built out the infrastructure, you’ve built out the processes, and now you are ready to scale.

And I'm going to compare that... And you know, those of you guys who listen to my podcast and a lot of the recent episodes I've had with co-host companies—so effectively, you're a co-host company.

Emmanuel: Yeah, yes.

Jeremy: You’ve got your own spin on it, but effectively, that’s what it is. And, you know, some of these huge players, they just tried to jump out of the roof without, you know, having a foundation on their house.

Emmanuel: That's right. So we are modest Canadians. We're not venture-funded. We have investors in our company, but they're, you know, just wonderful angels. So we’re just…

Jeremy: They don’t need rocket ship growth.

Emmanuel: They don’t want rocket ship growth. They want nice, steady, properly founded growth. And that’s what we’ve been doing. So now, really, the whole infrastructure is built and working. And really, now, the thin edge of our tech—I call it the thin edge, kind of where we’re at—is building a lot of the partner portal functionality.

This is where our customers can now go in for the first time. It’s the first time our technology actually has a website where people can log in and see their bookings, book their owner stays, and their maintenance blocks, download CSV data for bookkeeping, and so on.

Now, we’re building reporting and metrics and marketing performance and booking performance dashboards. That’s kind of where all our tech efforts are at. But that means everything else is built, which is good.

Jeremy: Okay, so you have this pretty whole-service property management model. How do you get co-host clients?

Emmanuel: Yeah, exactly. So, I guess I—yeah, I understand your co-host reference. What we do is we’re not like—so Vacasa is the property management company with their own tech. We’re the tech with the service, but we’re not the property manager. We partner with local operators—we’ll talk about that a little bit—of different stripes and different kinds across North America, Canada, and Europe to turn them into the property manager.

So, we’re like the call center, the technology, the backend, the pricing. And then the local operator owns the relationship with the owners, owns the contract. So, it’s their business. Heck, they could sell it to Vacasa in two years if they wanted.

They bring to the table the good cleaners and the good maintenance people, and then we do our part, essentially. So, to answer your question: how do we find them? We like to think that we serve short-term rental entrepreneurs who want to grow a business with us, essentially powered by us.

We have different verticals that fit that. Agents and brokers are actually our fastest-growing vertical. And it makes sense because a lot of brokerages out there already offer traditional property management, and they often get asked—and I know this because they tell me, and these are my customers—they get asked, 'Hey, could you do short-term rentals?' And they’re like, 'No, I don’t know how.' They don’t want to go buy software. They don’t want to hire people in the Philippines. It’s just not their business.

And then in comes Jetstream as a complete package—a white-label package. And we talked about this, where I’m saying like, 'Yeah, broker, I will represent whatever brand you want. It could be your existing one, it could be a new one you create, and we’ll power your short-term rental division.' That’s why we’re here at the NAR."

Jeremy: Yeah, and that is also why we are here. That’s because we work with realtors, actually kind of more on the front end, to, you know, get co-hosts or get the marketing aspect of, 'Hey, we can help you show what your property—how your property should do. How you can expect, you know, monthly differences. You know, in July, you should expect more than January.'

This allows realtors to be seen as experts to their clients. So, then they get the client, but they don’t actually want to do the property management.

Emmanuel: That’s right.

Jeremy: And that’s when they hit up Emmanuel.

Emmanuel: And then we say, 'We’ll turn you into the property manager. We’ll do all the work. We’ll be your call center. We’ll handle payments. We collect the money from the guest, we pay the cleaners, the owners—we’re like the full back office, essentially.'

Jeremy: So that’s why we are both here, because we have seen the realtor customer segment as…

Emmanuel: Or customer channel, we call them verticals. I have multiple verticals. This is a vertical. Cleaning companies is another vertical, surprisingly, and I think a wonderful one because the good cleaners of a certain scale have good relationships with the asset owner.

At the end of the day, I would say the most trusted relationship probably sits between the cleaner and the asset owner because this cleaner is in your house cleaning your stuff. What I’m seeing now—again, customers are telling me this, I’m not making it up—is that they will be asked by the owner, "Hey, I really like you, Bob. Could you manage my rentals?" And Bob usually said, "No, I don't know how."

Now, powered by Jetstream, they can become a short-term rental entrepreneur.

Jeremy: Yeah, sure, I can do it. They don’t have to learn the ins and outs of it.

Emmanuel: They can just keep doing their $200 clean, and now they're making a percent—they're making. So that's a great deal for them. It's a wonderful deal. And personally, because I'm Canadian, I find a lot of beauty in this, like this economic empowerment of cleaning companies.

Jeremy: That's not—that doesn't have to be a Canadian thing. Come on, America! We love the American dream.

Emmanuel: That's right, exactly. You like it more than Canada, actually. A good point.

So I find a lot of cleaning companies are, from what I hear—I don't know, I honestly haven't done the research—but a lot are minority-owned, a lot of women-owned businesses. So to be able to kind of lift up economically, I find, personally, really genuinely, outside of just business and making money, I find that a wonderful thing.

I think that's why I love being in business—it's to lift, lift, lift everybody up.

Jeremy: So this is already—we have a couple of very tangible tips on whether you're trying to build a co-host business for yourself. And, you know, if you want to do the management, you can do it. Totally ways to do it.

If you don't, and you want to focus on growing it—the customer, you know, building out your customer base—let Emmanuel do the actual management for you.

But either way, a tangible tip is cleaners. Like, if you build relationships with cleaners, you—you can, I mean, you can get referrals from cleaners, or you can partner with them, as is effectively what you are doing.

So, how do you target cleaners?

Emmanuel: Great question. I don’t know yet. Okay, it's the very—

Jeremy: That’s the question.

Emmanuel: All right, yeah. So I’ll give you my thoughts. And I—I mean, I hope no competitors are listening here, by the way, because if you are, please tune out to this.

So far, it’s been word of mouth. One of the latest ones we signed up in Park City, Utah—great guy—he's got a maintenance, cleaning, almost concierge company. He had been asked by a customer to do this, and he had gone on Google, and he was looking for Jetstream. Like, he was typing in things like backend property management, and ultimately, he typed in white-label property management. Somehow, we surfaced in Google—that's how he found us.

So far, it's just been luck, it's been intros. What I’m going to do next year is I’m going to go to a home services trade show, like a trade show for home service companies.

Jeremy: Yeah, I was about to say, because like, there's a conference for realtors—is there a conference for..

Emmanuel: I don't know if there's a cleaner conference, but there's definitely service companies, like building, like home shows. I’m going to do that. I’m going to…

Jeremy: All you need maybe?

Emmanuel: Maybe. Well, that's very large, but yes, something like that. So I’m going to do that. I’m going to do some email marketing by buying lists. And I also have a built-in referral program built.

When we started working with agents, we quickly realized that these guys work in a world of, like, 'If I send you a lead, I want a percentage of this and that,' right? So we actually built that into our tech.

As much as our tech is able to pay for every single booking—you, the agent, your homeowner behind you, and the cleaner—into everybody’s bank account..

Jeremy: Everyone sees the financial split?

Emmauel: Yes, it’s all automated because we use Stripe Connect. We’ve also built the ability to—well, if you were actually referred by an agent or any of my customers over here, I’m going to give them a slice of my revenue. All automated on a monthly basis into their bank account.

So in my world, they’re like a referrer, and my tech supports the concept of a referrer. So I’m actually going to lean into that this year. It works—I have referrers, and it’s all working. I just haven’t really marketed it to my existing customers.

Like it is in any company, you build stuff, but sometimes you just don’t market it enough to your world. It’s like, 'Okay, that project’s done, moving on to the next thing.’ So my goal this year is to kind of lean in heavy to that, like, 'Hey, dear customers who love us, introduce us to other people, and you’ll make money.'

Jeremy: Totally. So why do you think it’s so important for realtors to build this additional income stream?

Emmanuel: I’ve been saying it for years… I mean, this is a no-brainer for not every agent. I don't even know what percentage of agents this appeals to, but obviously, agents live in a transactional model. They make a lot of money in transactions, but it's feast or famine. But in the good years.

Jeremy: For now, they do.

Emmanuel: Yeah, for now, they do. Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy: Well, we'll touch on this a little bit, just because I think it's extremely relevant. There was just a court verdict in Missouri that essentially said that the 6% fee—that Realtors usually get, with 3% going to the buyer and 3% going to the seller on every transaction—that fee is, like, too high, and it's hurting the consumer.

So, that was a couple of weeks before us sitting here.

Emmanuel: Yeah.

Jeremy: And this is the National Association of Realtors conference, so this is who that verdict was, like, kind of "quote unquote," against.

Emmanuel: Yes.

Jeremy: So, it's an interesting time to be here right now. But I think, as we were talking about earlier, it just further kind of accelerates the urgency and need, as a realtor, to build additional income streams.

Emmanuel: Absolutely. I think you and I could not be at a better place right now to be pitching, like, "Hey, dear real estate professional, Realtor, you can be making extra income and less transactional income, and more kind of recurring side income on top of your existing network and relationships."

I’ve been pitching that for years now in this vertical, but this lawsuit, I think, is actually a tailwind for us, as much as it's not a good time for the National Association of Realtors right now.

Jeremy: Yeah, we'll see. I mean, time will tell.

Emmanuel: Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy: Yeah, you never know. But yeah, I’d also say, I mean, I’ve had a lot of conversations with Realtors. We’ve demoed our product for the last few days, and I’ve asked Realtors around the country, 'Do you work with investors?'

And then a lot of times they go, 'Yeah, we work with investors.' I’m like, 'Okay, what type of properties?' 'You know, mostly like normal rentals.' And I go, 'Okay, how’s that working out?' They're like, 'Yeah, it’s definitely dried up. It’s hard to find things that, like, cash flow.'

Whereas with short-term rentals, you still can find it. I mean, it’s not—you know, obviously the interest rates and everything have hit short-term rentals the same. But you still can. Like, I mean, I personally am under contract right now. You can cash flow.

It’s just such a good opportunity for you to be, like, the expert in your market and just provide this option to your clients.

Emmanuel: Yes, it’s about adding another tool to their tool belt, another arrow to their quiver of, 'I’m also an expert in this.' Whether or not they work with Jetstream and become the manager, just to your point in your business, becoming an expert in this is a differentiation point for the agents.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Emmanuel: Which is huge because it is—certainly before the downturn—a bit of a crowded space, in terms of 1.7 million Realtors or whatever that we’re part of. I mean, that’s a lot. So, it’s a differentiation point, and then you can further monetize this differentiation point if you want.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Emmanuel: Because they are the experts. Like Realtors—this is why the customers we sign up—they literally get asked. They're good people, they’re trustworthy, and then the buyers are like, 'Hey, I like you, and I trust you. Can you help me find a management company, or can you just straight up be my manager?' And that’s how oftentimes they come to us. That’s how it all started.

Jeremy: And that’s—my initial co-host clients were through Realtor referrals. They were just, 'Hey, Jeremy’s the expert.' Yeah, Jeremy’s the expert in this local area, and they just gave them my phone number, and I’d get a random call, you know.

Emmanuel: So yeah, well, congrats, that’s good. You are the expert.

Jeremy: and I—yeah, I mean, very small random market, a lake in North Carolina. I was like the first person doing it, really. When we got our first property up, it was like we were the third on the lake. Now there’s 75, I guess.

Emmanuel: Okay.

Jeremy: But that being said, just being the expert—yes. And it doesn’t take much in short-term rentals to be the expert.

Emmanuel: No, it doesn’t.

Jeremy: It’s like crazy how—I just turned 27. But really, like, I’m not—okay, maybe I’m not Canadian, I think I’m pretty humble, but I would say I do honestly feel like I’m, quote-unquote, one of the experts. Which is crazy to me, that I can be 27 and having done this for, like, four years. And genuinely, I do actually have more experience at this than 99.999% of people. In what field or industry is that the case?

Emmanuel: That’s a really good point. I can’t believe you’re 27. Congratulations!

Jeremy: Turned 27 last week.

Emmanuel: Wow, you’re making me feel a little bit older at this point.

Jeremy: Hey, you don’t look old. You’ve got good energy. But that’s what I think is exciting about short-term rentals—it’s like you can, in two months, honestly become the local expert.

Emmanuel: Yeah, I mean, we just signed up a brokerage in Florida, part of Exit Group. And at the end of our onboarding process, they said, 'Hey, could you give us a certificate saying that we are a Jetstream-certified brokerage?'

Because they felt that the education they got in onboarding, they felt locked and loaded. Like, they probably are, relative to all other brokerages in their area now. Most, I mean, they don’t have a lot of experience, but they certainly can speak the language and have the tools and have the revenue estimates and all these things. And that’s not hard.

Like, that was a month onboarding process, and that’s just the tip. So, to your point, it’s like, yeah, you’re like 99.999, but the average person starting can get to a conversational expertise pretty fast.

Jeremy: Yeah, and that’s what’s cool. I mean, when we see people sharing, like, BNBCalc share links—whether it’s a Realtor, investor, in, like, a Facebook group or something—people commenting, like, 'Oh wow,' like, that’s like—and then, you know, all of a sudden you’re elevated to—

Emmanuel: Yes, that’s brilliant. Your share link in BNB Calc is genius.

Jeremy: Thank you.

Emmanuel: Yeah. Seriously.

Jeremy: Yeah. No, it’s definitely been, like, the cool—definitely the most

Emmanuel: Virality built in.

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we’re leaning into that heavy. We put Realtor branding on the share links. Because before, it didn’t have—you know, you couldn’t put your contact information on it. You couldn’t put your brokerage, your face, your logo, your email. So, I mean, I tell Realtors—or just anybody—I mean, here I’m talking to Realtors, but in general, just print out a stack of, like, 50. Go to every open house in your market. Print out 50 share reports.

Just drop the stack. Now, someone comes in, they’re looking to buy the house, and they’re like, 'Oh, maybe it’s a vacation house that they’re thinking about renting out part of the time. You know, six, seven months of the year.' They don’t want to do it themselves.

Emmanuel: I think the synergy between us is just…

Jeremy: We’ll talk.

Emmanuel: Yeah. Exactly. It’s very obvious—becoming more obvious by the minute as we talk.

Jeremy: We—yeah, exactly. So yeah, we’re working a deal out here too, so you guys got a live, uh, a live deal happening.

But yeah, what advice would you give? So I know we’re here talking to the Realtor, but just, like, anybody listening who’s not a Realtor—like, they want to get into the short-term rental game in 2023—what advice would you give them?

Emmanuel: Good question. It's definitely a softer market than it was across most of our destinations. The last year has seen a decline in ADR, or occupancy, or both. It's not an easy time, and to make it worse, Airbnb is adding supply to their platform—almost 20% a year—which is not making things easy.

So, my advice is always to remember this is a hospitality business, and the goal is to exceed guest expectations. We simplify that when we talk about success for a listing internally. I mean, we have a lot of tools, data, and expertise, and so on.

But when we're talking to owners—because we're talking to people who are going to sign up owners here, I'm guessing, or owners that are interested in doing this themselves—we distill it to, like, the CPPR, or CPR, essentially.

The C is content, which is important—the content on the listing—but it's not the most important thing. It's photos.

PPR: photos, pricing, reviews. You’ve got to have absolutely stellar photos because the competition is now more fierce than it ever has been. And then you’ve got to have bang-on pricing, which means you need the right tools and the right expertise—not just kind of shooting from the hip, like, "Well, we got 200 bucks a night last summer, so let's see what happens with 200 bucks a night.”

And then your reviews need to be astounding. The reviews are the output of your hospitality journey for the guest—from everything, like seamless check-in, all the way to 24/7 communication, to exceeding expectations, to gift baskets. It’s competitive out there.

So, I think my only advice is to remember that and to focus on your CPPR—content first, but photos, pricing, reviews. If you rinse and repeat that successfully, you will outperform the market.

That's my advice.

Jeremy: You have to be tracking—essentially, the reviews are the result of everything leading up to that point.

Emmanuel: Yes. And that’s what’s fun about this business. Okay, if you're a grocery store—not Walmart, because I know they’re, like, satellite-connected to what’s going on in real-time—but your average grocery store isn’t necessarily getting reporting on how they’re doing that often. You’d have to, like, almost put somebody at the exit of the store and ask them, "How was your experience shopping here?"

Versus us: every single booking, we get a detailed output of, "How was the cleanliness? How was the value? How was the check-in experience? How was communications?" and so on. So, I love the fact that in this business, you get a real-time output of how you’re doing.

Now the question is: make your operations—which is easier said than done—build your operations to deliver a consistent, higher-than-expectation output on that. Because right now, especially with this oversupply, you need to be at a very high review score, with astounding photos and accurate pricing, to succeed.

Jeremy: Definitely. And, I definitely commend your ability to operate hundreds of properties. I mean, I have several dozen, which, you know, I don’t find that many people…

Something I take huge pride in—and, you know, knock on wood that this remains—is that I’m a Superhost at, you know, 20, 25, or so listings.

Emmanuel: That’s impressive.

Jeremy: Yeah, like, I forget the stat, and I always quote this stat, so I need to memorize it. But it’s like, you know, only whatever, 20% of people are Superhosts.

Emmanuel: Yeah.

Jeremy: And then only, like, a couple of percent have more than, like, 15 listings.

Emmanuel: Wow.

Jeremy: So it’s extremely, extremely challenging.

Emmanuel: It is. At that scale, it’s very challenging.

Jeremy: Yeah. And that's—I don’t have any gray hairs or baldness yet, but if I do, it’s definitely going to be because of, like, my craziness on—I need to keep, like, such high reviews and such high…

Emmanuel: Well, you’re obsessed, as you should be, about that, right? So that’s the thing with us. We partner with a variety of people. And it’s very much a business partnership. There’s a whole interview process when we start working with somebody to see if they’re going to be a good fit.

Jeremy: A good fit for you?

Emmanuel: A good fit. Because if they’re running a sloppy operation, then it’s going to—like, if I spend money to onboard customers, well, then we’re not going to get the bookings.

And it’s just going to be, like—it doesn’t touch my business because, in a way, I’m white-labeling them, and they have their own Airbnb account. But they do launch on my Vrbo Premier North American account. So, they contain my overall North American account. The point is, it's just a lost effort all around.

First of all, I need to get the right partner, and then I coach them on finding the right owners. Because, as you know, there are good owners, and there are not-so-good owners.

Jeremy: Definitely. Yes, I second that. And you need owners who understand it too. Because you're going through, effectively, a channel manager. So, for me, it's very important to communicate with the owners: "Hey, this is an issue here. You know, we can't leave all these construction supplies outside the house. It makes it look like you’ve got, like, a meth lab in there or something.

But I don’t say it like that! But you guys, you go through the intermediary. So, I’m curious—how do you kind of tell the owners what they need to hear?

Emmanuel: I don’t talk to the owners, really. That’s why I built this business model the way I have. During onboarding, I have one call with the owners—sorry, let me backtrack. During the onboarding of the partnership—let’s say we started working together—you’re experienced, but let’s say I talk with a Realtor.

They’re kind of new to this, and it’s a four-meeting onboarding process with a lot of education during the meetings, and also follow-up materials for them to look at. I’m sort of building a mini 'SDR University,' essentially. We’re in the early phase of that.

So now I’m training—I’m training the trainers, essentially. You know, I’m leading the horse to water so they can—you know that analogy. But you know what I mean.

When it comes to the owners, I only meet the owners once during the onboarding process of every property. We have a revenue management meeting with the owner where my revenue manager, the owner, and the Realtor or property manager show up. The purpose of this is to create a trust relationship with the asset owner, the homeowner, so that they trust us when it comes to pricing.

We used to not do that—this is another tip—we used to not do this, and then the owner would say, 'My floor rate is $500 a night.' We would launch, never have a meeting with them, and then, you know, the market would dip.

Now, they would get…

Jeremy: no bookings

Emmanuel: No bookings…

Jeremy: And they’re like, 'Why are we getting no bookings?

Emmanuel: Jetstream sucks. Realtor, you suck. It’s terrible,' right? So we thought, okay, let’s show up at a meeting, show our expertise, show the tools and the data. By the end of the hour meeting, we’ve talked about a lot of things. We got to know the owner—they kind of like us—but they go, 'Wow, okay. This Realtor, which is my guy, is backed by this incredible company with all the right tools and expertise. I now trust them.'

So that when we do say, 'Hey owner, the market has just tanked, and you need to be at a $300 floor rate,' they don’t go, 'What? You suck!' They go, 'Okay, I trust you on that.'

That’s the only time I talk to the owner. More importantly, I train my property manager—the Realtor, or whoever that would be—to find the right homeowners. And we give them a list of red flags.

An example of a red flag, which I’m sure you know, is when AirDNA or BNB Calc—now our new partnership in the making

Jeremy: Let’s go.

Emmanuel: Says, 'This property is worth $80,000 a year,' and they go, 'Well, I need $90,000 a year, or else I’m like this, and I’m going to go...' You know, 'You need to give me $90,000 a year, and…

Jeremy: If I don’t, then I can’t afford the mortgage. I’m going into foreclosure. I’ll never pay for repairs.

Emmanuel: Exactly. Bad partnership. No thank you. So, I train my agents to recognize these kinds of people. It’s a people business.

Jeremy: Yeah, and owners need to understand that in order for the business to perform better, it’s in their best interest to continually invest in the asset. Yes. And as an investor, you should improve the asset, a) from a revenue cash flow perspective, but b) for the value of the asset.

I mean, as BNBCalc shows pretty clearly, the biggest part of a real estate investment that you’re buying is appreciation.

Emmanuel: Yeah.

Jeremy: Improving the value of the asset over time. So, if you cheap out and let it turn into a favela, then things aren’t going well. It’s interesting that that’s something you need to—or essentially, you show yourself.

And I think this ties into our theme here, which is like, be the expert. The owner needs to know that you know.

Emmanuel: Yes. For a while there, we signed up single homeowners. I’d go straight to the homeowner. I didn’t go to them—they found us online. We’ve got this wicked piece of content—this is another tip for SEO. Our content agency wrote a piece of content titled 'Evolve vs. Vacasa vs. Jetstream.'

There are like a zillion people out there going on Google, saying, 'Are there alternatives to Vacasa or Evolve?' When they do, we show up high in Google’s organic results because of this piece of content.

So, I get homeowner leads all week long. We’ve actually stopped onboarding them, but for a while, I did. And for a while, I was actually onboarding them myself.

What I found is, if I presented them with the right data—and we have all kinds of data we present about the importance of the right cancellation policy, examples of great images versus crappy images, and the importance of having board games and needing to go over the top—owners are all over it. They just don’t know.

They’re lawyers and plumbers and whatever. That’s just not their business. So, when you educate your owner about the importance of really needing to crush this to succeed, they’re all on board. That’s what I found from experience. So, it’s working for us.

Jeremy: So, you indoctrinate them with best practices, and then that a) has them trust you, and b) filters up to the continuity of operations from your side of things, right? It’s top-down and bottom-up.

So yeah, be the expert, guys. Don’t say, "Oh, I’m oversharing, and somehow this information is going to be used against me." You want to be the expert.

Emmanuel: You want to b e the expert.

Jeremy: So, if they want to follow you, learn about you, learn about Jetstream—how can they find or follow your journey?

Emmanuel: Yeah, well, our website is Jetstream.tech.io—that’s our simple website. But if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, I love making new connections. Emanuel Lavoie—just find me on LinkedIn with Jetstream, send me a message, and let’s connect.

Jeremy: Awesome. Emanuel, thank you so much for joining today.

Emmanuel: Thank you for the opportunity.

Jeremy: Pretty last-minute here…

Emmanuel: I loved the chat.

Jeremy: This was great.

Emmanuel: and I look forward to continuing our deal-making here.

Jeremy: Let’s go. All right, guys, well, I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Short-Term Rental Pro Podcast. Be sure to follow and stay tuned for the next one—it’s going to be good.

And yeah, Emanuel and I are going to go back to making a deal…

Emmanuel: Yeah, real-time.