We have all heard of, and many of us have experienced first hand, the difficulties of growing and scaling a business. As you grow your Vacation Rental business, it is essential to implement operational processes that are consistent and scalable.We share our most useful tips to help you run your Vacation Rental business like a well oiled machine.
Accounting Software
With any business, knowing your numbers is the key to ensuring that you’re making a profit . Generating revenue is only half of the equation, you must understand your breakdown of costs and expenses. Tools such as Quickbooks or Xero are a great way to keep track of the numbers.
It is often hard to stay on top of all the numbers as you scale.f you have trouble managing the statements, consider hiring a professional accountant or bookkeeper. This is more expensive than the alternative, but oftentimes worth it.
Linen & Cleaning Service
As you build up your portfolio of properties, you’ll notice cleaning after each guest quickly becomes a huge undertaking for a sole operator. You can outsource these tasks to a variety of linen and cleaning services. Options vary from companies that specialize in cleaning, to contracting your own trusted team to delegate these tedious tasks.
Safety & Consistency
Creating a positive, consistent experience is one of the keys to scaling your business. If each of your listing is vastly different, it’s hard to replicate that model ten-fold. Instead, you want to have tools that make your job easier as you grow beyond a sole-property owner or small-scale property manager.
Tools like Party Squasher or other property management software are great investments when you start to scale your business. Party Squasher counts the number of mobile devices in your home and alerts you if it goes above your limit. Since party animals are never without their phones, you can proactively avoid the clean-up and noise complaints!
Generally speaking, you want to have consistency in the way you track and monitor all your listings. Often times, damages from one bad tenant can bring a lot of headache for your entire business, wiping out profits, especially early on when you only have a few listings. Minimizing these risks is crucial to scaling.
Growth Capital
Opportunities come and go. Great opportunities are few and far between, so it’s important to have financing capital behind your business as you grow. It is also often important to keep your personal and business financing separate. Services like Clearbanc’s Vacation Rental program invests up to $100,000 specifically in owners or property managers who are looking to acquire new properties and complete renovations.
The main advantage in keeping your business and personal financing separate is so that you can have a clear mindset when operating and growing your business, as you are not personally liable, and none of your assets (such as your house) are tied up as collateral.
Operating Buffer
Operating costs include any expenses or spending that are necessities to keeping your Vacation Rental business up-and-running. In the case of any business, you don’t want to be in a position of bankruptcy because of a poor season or unexpected bills.
Rule of Thumb: Generally speaking, you want to keep 3-6 months of operating expenses in cash, so if anything happens, you aren’t constrained and forced to make poor financial decisions under pressure. That amount will give you a comfortable buffer to operate your business at all times.
Treat it as a business
If you’re moving beyond one or two properties and aspire to expand your business it is important that you get into the mindset of running a professional operation. This means creating processes that are repeatable – automating systems that will help you replicate your current offerings five or ten times over.
Like all entrepreneurs, in order to have fun and build a scalable vacation rental business, you will have to treat it as a business. Successful businesses usually have three core qualities: great management, operational consistency, and funding capital backing the business.
About the author
Clearbanc, a company that has helped thousands of entrepreneurs grow their business through services like financing capital and business intelligence for your business.
If you’re interested in Clearbanc, you can signup here. As a Party Squasher reader, you will receive an exclusive discount on your financing offer. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Clearbanc team:support@clearbanc.com.
