Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 8 Episode 33. This is a recap of my interview with Jasper Ribbers where we talked about how to get paid for your pad.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
01:40 About Jasper
02:40 How Jasper ended up on short-stay accommodation
06:00 What Jasper learned in his blogging days
06:50 The moment Jasper decided to go all in on this new venture
08:05 Jasper's book
10:10 How Jasper met Eric of AirBnB
12:00 A mistake that hosts make when they get started
12:20 Questions for Jasper's students
13:00 International travel in the midst of a pandemic
16:30 How Jasper envisions international travel
17:40 Advice to hosts with international guests
20:40 Quickfire questions
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Transcript from the Episode
Jasper started AirBnB hosting on 2012back in Amsterdam. And back in the day, there was not a lot of information about Airbnb, so he had to figure everything out by himself. He came up with the idea of writing a book about it get paid for your pad that turned into a podcast.
They are six years in now with the podcasts with 330 episodes. He's still excited to be the host of the podcast, but also to be on other people's podcasts.
How Jasper ended up on short-stay accommodation
Jasper worked for six years in finance, he was trading first in Amsterdam, and then Chicago and the US went through the financial crisis, which actually was a turned out to be quite good for his company, because they were day traders. But after that, he realized that didn't want to sit in an office for the rest of his life and just looking at flat screens. He had eight flat screens, like they're big, and every single flat screen is full of numbers.
All he did all day was just looking at all these numbers. Jasper does like numbers. But after six years, he needed to do something different with his life. He wants to travel and see the world. He wants to see what the world is like and get to know different cultures and be in different countries, different continents, and everything.
So he decided that one day to tell his boss that he was going to quit that also meant that he wasn't getting paid anymore. He did have some savings but his biggest asset was his apartment in Amsterdam, right which at the time he was renting it out long term. But he didn't like that because he wanted to be able to stay in his own place when he was back in Amsterdam. Plus, it's really when you have a long term renter and he kind of lost control over his property in a way, at least in Holland, because it's very hard to get people out if you ever want control back of your home.
In 2011, Jasper stayed at an Airbnb as a guest and he felt he wanted to put up his place on Airbnb. He had no idea what will come out of it but if it wasn't for Airbnb, he might have had to go back to a trading job or something.
When Jasper started traveling back in 2010, we didn't have WhatsApp and you couldn't call each other for free and stuff like that technology wasn't as advanced and so people were still communicating over email a lot with, you know, with as a way to keep in touch and he was just getting tired of having to ride back from everybody. So one day he started a blog and then every week he'll write a story, put some pictures in there and he tells everybody, to go to his blog read his story. He doesn't want to spend two hours a day writing emails.
What Jasper learned in his blogging days
Jasper said the things he learned did not come naturally to him. His brain works really well for solving mathematical problems. He studied a combination of economics, statistics, and mathematics, that kind of stuff makes sense to him. Writing and social media definitely did not come naturally to him at all.
The moment Jasper decided to go all-in on this new venture
Jasper had one apartment in Amsterdam. Eventually, he had three properties. He manages a small boutique hotel, and he helps some other people manage listings and stuff. But he never had the ambition to grow like a big portfolio of management properties or anything like that.
What he was passionate about hosting is the connection with people. He loves to travel and different cultures. He's always interested in meeting people from different countries. But he became really passionate about education. After he wrote the book and started a podcast and stuff, he started realizing that he was able to really help people and empower them to make big changes in their lives.
Jasper's book
Jasper's book is called Get Paid For Your Pad. It's on Amazon. He originally wrote a travel book after he started writing his travel blog, he thought it'd be really useful information for people to know how to travel the world, which was he was doing and so he wrote a book, hired a cartoonist and editor. He spent quite a bit of money on it, actually and has high expectations. It has 10 chapters, all travel tips, basically meant for people that wanted to do the same thing.
He wanted to upload it to Amazon, then a couple of days later, Amazon got back to him. And they said that he couldn't sell it on Amazon because it was too generic. Jasper spent six months and probably spent $3,000 or something on that book. He had some savings for his finance career. He was fairly comfortable with his savings but still, that was a massive blow.
What it taught Jared was that he enjoyed writing. When he started with Airbnb, there was not a lot of information right now. He learned a really good lesson and he's still thankful for Amazon for refusing his book because it taught him that if you want to write something or if you want to sell something, it always has to it has to be a niche product, or you have to have a reputation You have to have a following.
How Jasper met Eric of AirBnB
Jasper and Eric started working together before they met. Eric used to do a summit, which was called the Airbnb Mastery Summit. Jasper spoke on this summit, and they started talking. Jasper recognized that he and Eric had very complementary skills. Eric is very good at thinking high level and very good at being organized and finding a structure or system around things, while Jasper is the opposite. He just wants to do stuff and create stuff. He doesn't really want to think about a system on how to do it. They just both kind of realized they had complementary skills. The one that one thing that they had in common, was their mindset. They're both into the same stuff like Tony Robbins, self-improvement, growing as a person and expanding your mindset, improving your mindset. They're both growth-oriented.
A mistake that hosts make when they get started
Hosts don't realize what it entails. What a lot of people do is they just create a listing, they put some fixtures up, you know, they take them with a smartphone, put some pictures up, you know, a couple of paragraphs of a description, and then they sit back. And then they are like, why am I not getting bookings?
Questions for Jasper's students
Look at the customer journey on Airbnb or whatever platform you're on, you got to understand the customer journey. If you haven't stayed at an Airbnb, that's the first thing you got to do. Because you got to understand your customer, right? And the best way to understand your customer is to be the customer. What do people look at when they look at the listing? Right? So start with yourself, what do you look at?
International travel in the midst of a pandemic
Jasper celebrated New Year in the French Alps skiing with his family. Then he flew to Barcelona, Then he ended up going to Dallas to support a friend. Then he had his legends event in Cartagena in Colombia. He stayed at his own place. He has an apartment in Colombia. He stayed there for about a week. Then he came to San Diego to work with Eric on their courses and their groups and everything seemed perfect.
He stayed in San Diego until early April, his immigration officer didn't renew his stamp when he flew into San Diego, which meant that when he first entered the US going to Dallas to see his friends, that was beginning of January. So that meant you know, you get free months, right as a non-American, you get free months.
He had to leave because, you know, you don't want to overstay in the US. His flight was canceled. He contacted KLM and they had another flight for me. At the weirdest journey of his life, he took a train from San Diego to Los Angeles wearing one of those mouthpieces, you call them a face mask. Hardly anybody on the train, no one on the streets, Los Angeles took a taxi to, to a hotel, the high airport hotel, no one no traffic, no traffic in LA and never seen that before the hotel was completely empty.
He was surprised he could still get a room there. Literally, when you're half a mile away, you can still take an hour because it's so jammed up usually, And then at the gate, there's hardly anybody there handing out the face masks. He had to wear a face mask on the plane the entire time, which became really annoying after a couple hours. Plane was almost empty. It was a quite a relaxing flight for Jasper because he had the whole aisle to myself, but it was a very strange experience.
How Jasper envisions international travel
Jasper has two opinions on this, there's one camp that says there's gonna be a lot of pent up demand, and people are gonna want to travel as soon as possible to travel again, people are going to jump on those planes, and they're going to go on those trips that they couldn't go on. And then there's another another camp that says people aren't going to do that, because people are still even though the the restrictions are going to ease people are going to still be worried about the about the virus and about, you know, about just being in crowded spaces and stuff like that.
Jasper's guess is probably number two. People will think this whole crisis has long term impact on the human psyche. People are gonna avoid crowded spaces for a while.
Advice to hosts with international guests
They have to be very opportunistic. Jasper owns three places, one in Colombia, one in Thailand, one in the Philippines, and he runs a small boutique hotel on the Red Sea in Egypt. So two out of four are closed down because they're not allowed to be open place in Colombia. He mainly caters to Americans there and then you know, Thailand is obviously also a tourist very touristic country. What he does is look at the all opportunities that are out there like right now you got to be open to any way that you can monetize your space. You got to jump on it. You're no longer catering to international vacationers. You have to cater to anybody who is looking for anybody who's looking for a space to use whether it's for a staycation.
Quickfire questions
If you could be on lockdown, or in isolation with any celebrity or popular famous figure? Who would that be?
If there's been that one movie, or that TV series that's been on your to-watch list on Netflix, and you've just been waiting to watch it, and obviously during lockdown, you've had that chance to watch it, what is it?
Game of Thrones. Money Heist. Tiger King.
For the past year, what has been your favorite purchase? Under 100 pounds or 100 euros?
Wine
Do you have a favourite podcast?
What would be your number one advice to anybody listening to help them increase their direct bookings?
Think about your avatar right so for Jasper, it's Instagram.
Know more about Jasper on his website.
Before you leave
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