Introduction and Airbnb Ban Incident
[00:00:00] Elam: March 19th, uh, actually one of our clients sent me a message like, Hey, uh, I can't find our Airbnb listing. I'm like, well, that's weird. So I log into our account and all our listings are suspended. So it's what they call a shadow ban, I guess. And my mind immediately went back to like two months prior when we had a guy stay at our house and we became suspicious after the fact that there was some sex traffic going on.
[00:00:22] Elam: It's horrible. So Airbnb policy says that if there's any kind of sex traffic, sexual violations like that, that, and this is, they're pretty much verbatim, I think that you should report it to Airbnb.
[00:00:52] Liam: Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast gives hosts, the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence.
[00:00:58] Liam: So you can go out there and get yourselves direct bookings. We do a mini series where we dive behind hosts who have got interesting stories and people who have run successful short term rental or hospitality businesses, and today we've got a special guest who's going to come on and talk about his story.
[00:01:16] Liam: And, uh, uh, I'm excited to dive into this because this is something which, um, will strike fear into some, but actually once you know about how to deal with things like what we're going to be talking about today, then you're much better equipped as an entrepreneur and as a, as a business owner. So let's welcome along our guest today.
[00:01:37] Liam: We've got. Elam King. Did I pronounce that right?
[00:01:41] Elam: Elam King, yep.
[00:01:42] Liam: Elam King.
[00:01:43] Elam: Not Elam Queen, not Elam Prince, Elam King.
[00:01:46] Liam: I love it. Um, so we've got Elam here and he's going to be talking to us about a particular story which happened. So Elam, usually I'd go into a, a, You know, sort of a business pitch and stuff like that.
[00:01:58] Liam: But before we go into that, what would you like people to take away from this episode today?
[00:02:04] Elam: I guess we're talking about, um, what happened in our business. And it started about four months ago. And just one thing after another went kind of sideways. And one of those was getting kicked off the Airbnb platform.
[00:02:18] Elam: So there's a lot of like standard advice that people will get. Like, diversify. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Uh, you know, maybe have a direct booking channel and frankly, that was one of the things I wanted to work on more. We had it, but I wanted to work on more on it more. Yeah, so there's there's a lot of like standard business advice that people are gonna that people will give.
[00:02:44] Elam: Another thing is don't build your business on someone else's business, you know, and it's true. Airbnb hosts, you know, we're kind of working for Airbnb.
[00:02:53] Liam: Can you give us like an elevator pitch of, of your business before that? Like, what does your, where is your business based? Um, give us the, the kind of rundown of, of what your business looks like or looked like.
Starting in Hospitality and Real Estate
[00:03:05] Elam: Uh, at the height, we were probably operating like 20 properties doing a little bit over a million in revenue per year, uh, in Eastern. USA, uh, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish country, actually. I actually grew up Amish. So, uh, I got that in my, in my blood. Um, and ironically, just before the blow up, I started talking quite a bit more about the company to people and, and what the vision is.
[00:03:35] Elam: I got super clear with the vision and that was to design a hospitality brand that ignites people's souls. And what I mean by that is. Uh, so often in hospitality we look at it as like a bed and, and, and maybe breakfast. Now we talk about experience, we talk about, you know, whatever. Although the word experience in a lot of ways has kind of gotten Kind of become cliche.
[00:03:58] Elam: I think I kind of like don't like the word, but I don't have a better one. So, um, but anyway, back to that, you know, we often look at hospitality is like a bed starting with a bed. Definitely, you know, then, you know, you tack on maybe breakfast for some people and maybe you tack on experience. Whereas what I was looking at to ignite people's souls.
[00:04:21] Elam: So we have, we are much, much more than our physicality. We also have a soul, we have feelings, we have issues, we have joys, we have sorrows, we have pains, you know, whatever. Uh, there's so much more to us as a human race than what first meets the eye. And my goal was to continue to develop our hospitality brand to where we give people, and here's the word again, experience, an experience of a lifetime, an experience that actually helps them come to grips with maybe some of their problems.
[00:04:56] Elam: So maybe you're a stressed out CEO or whatever, I'm just using it simple. And you have some issues that you're working with and you can't, you just like, you just need time away. And you need an environment where that stress can go away. You can think again, you can actually find solutions. You can come to grips with maybe your inner self, uh, and just, you know, different things like that.
[00:05:21] Elam: So that's, that's where I was like, looking to take the company.
[00:05:25] Liam: What did you do before hospitality? How did you, how did you get started in this business?
[00:05:31] Elam: Um, funny thing is our first house, this was seven years ago. It's all about seven years ago that we bought our first house. Okay. And before that I had kind of started looking in the real estate or or I barely knew the word real estate Uh buying a house.
[00:05:50] Elam: I had no experience in in real estate. I'd experienced in the trades But not real estate. So I was like, I'd like to buy a house that becomes an asset, not a liability. House hacking, right? And I didn't have that clear thinking back then. It was just, that's how I phrase it now. You know, it's like, oh, that's what I was doing.
[00:06:15] Elam: In other words, I wanted a house that You know, pays its own bills. And I forget the exact wording out of my head, but that's what I wanted to do. And so we found a seven bedroom house in Lexar city. We're actually living in Lexar city at the time. Uh, this is Lancashire City, Pennsylvania, not Lancashire City, UK, but anyway, um, so we found this 7 bedroom house, and it had 3 exterior doors, and so what we did, and it was a complete mess.
[00:06:48] Elam: We, we, uh, yeah, we completely redid the inside. Um, and so then what we did is we closed a couple of doors because Township or the city wouldn't allow us to just build walls wherever we wanted to. But we would close doors and put up bookcases and do different things like that. And we ended up making it three apartments.
The First Property and Business Growth
[00:07:11] Elam: We lived in one and then we rented the other two out. Um, and the house paid for itself very, very well, very nicely. And then we sold it almost a year ago and made a really handsome profit on that as well. So we got into that, and then it's like, Oh, well, this works. Um, and then we got into arbitrage. First one was my brother in law's house.
[00:07:41] Elam: They were moving elsewhere for season. It's like, well, I mean, I'll pay a rent for it. I'll pay you rent. And if you let us use a short term rental, I didn't know what rental arbitrage was back then. I didn't year or two later. I found, Oh, that's what you call that. Okay. So that's how we got into it. And then eventually it's like.
[00:08:01] Elam: Wait, we have a business, and then we just kept growing it, uh, and then eventually got into management, managing for other people, and so forth, so.
[00:08:10] Liam: I kind of get the, the business before the event that we're going to talk about, and I kind of get what has got you into it. So, let's dive into, to what actually happened.
[00:08:19] Liam: Take us back to, to, first of all, when was it, and what happened?
Arbitrage and Managing Other Properties
[00:08:23] Elam: Yep, so March 19th, the forever famous. infamous day in the history of the company, right? March 19th. Uh, actually one of our clients sent me a message like, Hey, Uh, I can't find our Airbnb listing. I'm like, well, that's weird. So I log into our account and all our listings are suspended.
[00:08:41] Elam: So it's what they call a shadow ban, I guess. And I'm like, what? And my mind immediately went back to like two months prior when we had a guy stay at our house and we became suspicious after the fact that there was some sex traffic going on. It's horrible. I mean, I cringe just like mentioning it. So Airbnb policy says that if there's any kind of sex.
The March 19th Shadow Ban
[00:09:04] Elam: You know, sexual violations like that, that, and this is, they're pretty much verbatim, I think that you should report it to airbnb.
[00:09:16] Elam: And I know it's quite verbatim, but that's clearly the idea. So I did that. So they took us down.
[00:09:21] Liam: That's crazy, isn't it? So, so, You've done the right thing. You've seen something which shouldn't be happening.
[00:09:26] Liam: And I've got to be honest. I mean, as hosts and those of you who are listening to this will know exactly what I'm talking about is that there are times you suspect there's something which is happening in your properties, which shouldn't be happening. So you've done the right thing, been responsible.
[00:09:39] Liam: You've reported it. And how have they repaid you? They've taken you down. So they've done that, that shadow band.
[00:09:45] Elam: Well, okay. So, so let me back up when we got to shadow band on March 19th, my mind went back to this incident two months earlier, which I was just talking about, right. And now they just took a listing down.
[00:09:58] Elam: They didn't take the whole account down. Now, the weird thing is what really, what really ticked me off then with them was they then later called me. Or message no message me and said, Hey, we have completed the investigation. Uh, we need you to change the wording disclosing your cameras.
Airbnb's Response and Camera Policy
[00:10:20] Liam: So they were they were more concerned about the cameras than the violation.
[00:10:24] Elam: Here's what I think was the issue. They didn't find anything wrong. So they had to have something, something so that they can get my listing back up. They had a reason to accuse me of something. So they made something up and it was like, you need to put in your listing that if their cameras are recording 24 seven, one, they're not too.
[00:10:46] Elam: I don't have to say that
[00:10:48] Elam: I have to disclose that they're there and where they are. That's all, that's all your policy. And I argued with them, but I was like, whatever. Okay. And I told him, I told the persons. I said, look, I'm going to do what you say, but then as soon as we're done, I'm going to change it back to the way it was.
[00:11:04] Elam: I mean, I was that brazenly honest with it.
[00:11:08] Elam: They said, thanks for putting my listing back up.
[00:11:10] Liam: Yeah, they just need a reason to put it back up. But I mean, the fact that they've got the, um, the control over one of your listings like that is frustrating, right? You know, like, as in, it's just, um, and also the lack of, Um, no, you know, if somebody said, Hey, thanks for reporting this, by the way, we've noticed this isn't on your listing.
[00:11:29] Liam: So unless you change it, we're going to give you three days to change. You know, we're going to then take down your listings. It's the fact they did it before communicating, you know, which isn't good. Thank you so much for sharing your story on the Boosley podcast. Thank you too, for listening to this episode.
[00:11:42] Liam: As I say, if you do want to reach out to Elam, if you want to add to his network there, you Then you can do with the notes around in the show, make sure that you're building your business on your land. Make sure you're diversifying, um, amongst the jerks, amongst the OTAs that we said about. So that that's definitely memorable and, um, yeah, really take action on this.
[00:12:04] Liam: So thank you so much. That's a goodbye from me on this podcast. We'll see you on the next one.
