So, after managing thousands and thousands of guests on multiple platforms, Airbnb and VRBO and multiple cities and multiple countries. Fortunately, I know that I’m being lied to, and you may be being lied to as well. That’s what I want to talk about this week.

Welcome to short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate but with a specific focus on short-term rentals, quick actionable items to acquire manage and scale your portfolio. I’m your host, Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast this week we’re talking about lie. I know that’s a deep subject, isn’t it? But the fact is, there are situations when our guests are lying to us or very inclined to lie to us. And then there’s also some situations where hosts are aligned to their guests. Unfortunately, hopefully that’s not happening to our Often. But I want to break down both sides of that before I do though, I want to Define what line is and dishonesty. And I’m not going to use my own words, but I’m going to use the words of Sam Harris. Who is one of the most articulate human beings I have ever encountered. He wrote a book called lying and it is been a super influential book for me. So, I highly highly suggest you pick up a copy of it.

It’s a short read but it is jam-packed. He just has such a good job. Explaining why we should never lie including White Lies. So let me read his words real quickly to give you his definition. He says to lie his to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication, when they expect honest communication, that means. If you area poker player or if you’re a magician well you are off the hook on that one.

There’s lots of reasons why people lie and a lot of times we will say something even though we don’t feel like it’s a lie couple. Examples. Here people lie to avoid embarrassment and lie dishonesty. We can put those in the same group people exaggerate their accomplishments. This is another way of lying or being dishonest and we make promises. Sometimes we know we can’t keep that is another form of line and sometimes we lie to our family members or our friends or team members to spare their feelings. But I want to explain why we should not be doing that.

And I, fortunately discovered this book a long time ago. So, I very very much value honesty. Everyone on my team, everyone in my circle of friends, if they’re not honest, I don’t spend a lot of time with them. So, before we get into the guest situations as are lates for short-term rentals, I just want to give you another example of why a white lie is not a good lie either. Let’s say, for example, Friend or your significant other. Whoever happens to be put on a dress and they say, they ask you do. I look fat in this dress, we’ve heard this statement before now, of course, if they are not fat, then it’s very easy for you to talk with them about this, right? You can be honest but let’s say you don’t think they’re fat but they do look fat in that dress.

For example, then you can clearly say. I don’t think you’re fat but I think that dress doesn’t fit you as well as maybe the other one. Does the nice thing about Ian is that we can phrase things in a way to get our message across and multiple different ways. We don’t have to be brutally honest, there’s away to be honest without making it super harsh and difficult for the other person. So, that’s the nice thing. We have multiple ways of being honest, as long as we are getting the message across that we actually believe.

Now let’s take this example up a notch and make it a little more difficult. What if you believe your friend is actually fat? Well, this gets more Difficult. Right, that’s a hard thing to tell your friend, but let’s think about it. If you lie to them and tell them, you don’t think they’re fat. Do you think that helps amount? Let’s say, for example, that your friend happens to be a 35 year old single female, for example? And you know that she really wants to settle down. She wants to have a family, she’s trying to get out in the dating world and she would be happier if she lost a few more pounds. Do you think If you deny her, the Truth. If you don’t actually tell her. Do you think that’s helping her? If she thinks everything’s fine? It’s not right. I mean that’s a hard thing to do but we’ve got to be honest. Really, there’s no reason to lie ever.

The example, he gives in the book, The only time that we should ever lie and this is like point zero zero, zero, zero zero one percent. According to Sam Harris is if it is moral to do so, and if the benefits Humanity Entity. So, I’ll let your mind wander without one, but that’s basically never, right? So, white lies. I know they may seem like we’re helping our friends but really, they’re not couple other real quick examples Christmas. For example. I remember when I was younger and I believed in Santa Claus, and then my brothers told me, or someone told me that Santa Claus was fake. And so, I went to my mom and asked her mom. I heard Santa Claus is not real, is That true? Have you been lying to me? Or did you lie to me? And I remember her telling me the truth and I just started crying, right? I don’t remember how old I was, and this isn’t really a big deal, right? Or it didn’t seem like a big deal, but this is the thing about lies. They have an impact that lasts for a really long time. So, I know, when my mom when Christmas comes around, she thinks about that time when she lied to me, and I got really emotional and sad and crying. So, every Christmas it comes around. She thinks about that.

I know it’s a silly example. I just want to give that example that lies we can’t take him back after we tell them, right. They’re just out there and they require maintenance. If you’re trying to cover up a lie that you told, however, long ago you have to keep working on that versus telling the truth. There’s nothing to cover up. So, thank you for listening to my rant online. I wanted to Define it before we get into how it relates with our guests. If you haven’t read, Sam Harris is book. Lying yet. Please pick up a copy. I swear. It’s packed full of amazing. Amazing. Samples. So, there are some situations for us, operating short-term rentals where we might be inclined to tell these white little lies or at least, not be honest.

So, let’s talk about a few of those here in Airbnb. Support resolution, for example, if you’re fibbing that to let’s say someone ruins your couch and you put a resolution out for twice the money and it’s not justified in any way. So, it’s not just for the price the couch, including you Coordination fees. And after all your fees, it just is an honest. Well, that’s a lie, right? You shouldn’t be doing it now. Maybe that’s an example, where you aren’t going to get caught, who knows, but let’s say you do Airbnb has a lot of power, right? If you have your listings on Airbnb in, you’re doing something dishonest, they can take you off the platform and you better believe if you’re caught just lying out, right?

That’s a really good reason for them to remove you from the platform. They don’t want dishonest host on there, right? So, that’s One example, when you’re dealing with Airbnb, make sure that you’re honest. Let’s say, a guest asks you if they can check in early, tell them the truth. If you don’t ever offer early check-ins because it’s hard to coordinate with your housekeepers and it’s kind of an operational nightmare. You can tell him that, of course you can tell them that in away. That’s not so brute, right. But tell them the truth versus saying, oh no, I’m sorry.

You can’t check in early because we have a guest check in and right after you, what if they show up and you don’t have Another guest checking in right after them and they see that it never feels good being lied to, right? So, make sure you’re telling the truth when it comes to contractors. For example, I remember working on a property and I had someone in Brazil actually negotiate on my behalf for some materials or something like that, and he’s on the phone, and I’m listening to him, talk to the contractor. And he says, oh yeah, my client found this for x amount of price and this is me working my way through Portuguese as well. I remember think I Ever found it for that prize. And so, what am I thinking? Thank, you know, these contractors dishonest if he’s dishonest to this supplier. Well then, he’s probably dishonest with me as well, right?

So that’s the other thing. If we go back to the white lie example and you tell your friend that you don’t think they’re overweight when. In fact, they are or if you tell them the truth, they know they can come back to you for the truth, right? So, if you’re just honest, once people expect you to be dishonest again in the future, something I’ve heard from some mentors of mine is that it can take a lifetime to build a reputation, right? Can take your whole life but you can ruin it with one little lie. So just really, really be cognizant of the way you’re communicating, make sure that it’s clear everyone appreciates someone that’s truthful and honest, that’s who we want around us, right? So, there’s a couple of examples where you might be kind of inclined to FIB, you know, if you’re negotiating. Or if you’re talking with Airbnb, support trying to get money back, something like that.

So, let’s flip sides here. We have guests or dishonest with us, don’t, we unfortunately, at least you will if you’re just getting started in the short term, rental space, something’s going to come up. So, I want to give you a few potential examples. Number one, your guest says, I need to cancel my reservation. Unfortunately, my flight was canceled or my business conference was canceled, or I got sick or had a family emergency and I can’t Get some emergency to help them get their reservation money back now. Clearly a lot of this could be very hundred percent honest but sometimes it might not be right. Someone decides I want to change something, but they know there’s cancellation policy so they’re trying to get around it. That’s one area where you might get a little bit of dishonesty.

My recommendation there just stick with your cancellation policy, right? We can’t adjust our cancellation policy for Someone and not adjusted for someone else in the future because again, it comes back to being honest. What, if you adjust it for that person and someone else in the future asked you? And you say, I’m sorry, we can’t budge on our cancellation policy, but you won’t, you did budge in the past. Well, then you’re being dishonest, right? And that just doesn’t feel good. So, I would say in that example. Just make sure you stick to your cancellation policy.

What if I guess shows up with more guests than they put on the reservation? That’s another form of Honesty, right? What if they show up with a dog? Well, what can we do here? Hopefully, you have a security camera. Monitoring your entrance and you can clearly call them out on that one. So, these are a few examples of times when our guests might be dishonest with us but where we can kind of easily call them out on it. Another one might be if they checked out late and your housekeeper showed up and they had to wait around for an extra hour and you file the resolution and the guests that I did not check out late while there’s a way to combine. About this too. If you’re using a Smart Lock that has a unique code for your guests. So, this is the way we do it, all of our guests have unique codes. So, we know they’re the only one using it, and we can see the last time they used it, if they lock the door at 1:30 p.m., or if they open the door, 1:30 p.m., and there are supposed to check out at 11:00. Well, we can send a screenshot of that and we know that there were being a little dishonest with us there as well.

Now there’s a really big one here that really just kind of punches you in. The gut and it doesn’t feel good. And that’s when a guest is dishonest about their review, who it’s painful, and I’ve got some good tips on that, but you gotta stay tuned for next week. I’m going to break down all the reasons why and how we can get false reviews, removed Justice, right? The head feels good to get those reviews removed when we know they were dishonest. So that’s a big one and you’ll just have to stay tuned. I will get into that next week so make sure you don’t mix it. A couple other scenarios where your guests might be dishonest with you and now these are a little more difficult to prove housekeeping. For example, what if your guest shows up and says the Sheets Were stained or I found all this hair on the floor? Yes, it’s possible. But guests could put their own hair. They could put on the floor, they can make something dirty to get some refund, this can happen.

And unfortunately, this is one of those things. It’s a little harder to monitor. Now, if you’re using a system like Breezeway of talked about before, Where you have really diligent checklist, maybe you have your housekeepers taking photos and videos of the property after they clean it. So, you have proof well that can help you out but it’s one of those tough areas, it’s not gonna be 100% win. So that’s one area. The other one is smoking. If your housekeeper shows up in the property and it smells like smoke and your guests might say they might lie to you and say I never smoked in the property. Well, that one again is hard to win but there are a couple Always if you find any sort of evidence cigarette butts in the trashcan wherever they are, well then you can use that as well. They are coming out with smoke monitoring devices. Well, I know I’ve got some friends that use those and they can really help. So, if you’re using one of those, that’s another way to prove that your guess was being dishonest.

So, this isn’t a fun topic, right? We don’t like dishonesty. We don’t like being lied to and we should not be lying or being dishonest toother people but Reality is, is this just happens? I really hope that you pick up a copy of this book because I swear it is so much easier to live a life. That’s honest. Well, you don’t have to cover up for lies and you can tell the truth in your mind just feels free, right? So hopefully, I didn’t intimidate you with some of the ways that your guests might be dishonest with you. My team and I have managed tens of thousands of guests so we’ve kind of had everything happen to us and it doesn’t happen very Often the luckily, but those are a few situations where it might.

So again, I know I went a little deep here on the subject of line, but it’s been very important for me and again for all the people that I surround myself by so make sure to pick up a copy of Sam Harris has book line and just imagine what it would be like if we all lived in a world that was 100% honest, it’d be fantastic. So, until next time, I hope you guys have a fabulous week and I’ll talk to you soon.

Want to get on the fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals what all starts with the properties you acquire. But you want to make sure that you acquired the right properties, I want to give you my ebook. That will show you how to do just that. There is no charge. It’s my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. Just go to restmethods.com. That’s REST methods.com

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