The Truth About Airbnb Income, Hint… It’s Not What You Think with Lauren Madewell

You too can create passive income on Airbnb. Get rich quick so you can spend your days sipping margaritas on the beach. Unfortunately, there are actually people out there propelling these myths. So when I heard someone utter the phrase passive my assive in regards to running vacation rentals, I knew I had to talk to her. You are listening to the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast, bringing you all the information you need for your short term rental to stand out from the crowd. I'm your host, Jenn Boyles. As an owner and manager myself, I know how hard it can be to navigate the hospitality industry. I'm here to help so you too can have direct booking Direct Booking Success. Hello and welcome to another episode of the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast. I'm Jenn Boyles, your host. I'm super excited to be here with you today. I'm speaking with Lauren Madewell. Lauren is the operations manager of Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals located in the Spooky Mountains. Now, she got my attention by coming up with that phrase passive my assive. And when I heard it, I just knew I had to have her on the podcast. And since getting into her world, I have heard the phrases inside out. Hospitality. Hospitality is a spectrum and Happy Weed Your Garden Day. So I'm so excited to speak to her about these things and more. Welcome, Lorne. Thank you for joining me today.

Jen, I'm so happy to be here with you. And I got to say, I love your voice. I think you have such a good, like, narrator's entertainer's voice. I love it.

Thank you. Thank you. That's really it.

I'm excited to be here with you guys.

Yeah, I'm so glad you're here because I have to say that passive my assive, it just all those pet peeves that I have when I'm looking at the industry as a whole and I'm seeing these people out there talking about getting rich quick and all this, and I'm like, seriously, this is so not passive. If anyone thinks scrubbing toilets and changing bed linen and dealing with guests is passive, they're crazy. Is that where it came for you?

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

No, and I'm right there with you. And that's what got my attention, because I just went, yeah, that is so, so true. And, you know, the pandemic came out, and the world opened up, and people went crazy because they've been stuck in their houses. And of course, it was like a little gold rush, but, yeah, so not passive. So tell me about it. It's your family business, Auntie Belham's Cabin. How did it start? And how. And why did you join the team?

Yeah. No, that's wonderful. And as you were saying about your dad visiting and falling in love, I got total goosebumps because that's what hospitality, I think, does for us. It's just the areas, the locations, but also the staff and the properties and helping guests. It just gave me goosebumps, as you said that. So you've been in it for 13 years? My goodness. What was your degree in college?

Air traffic management. It was my sister's degree. She followed in my footsteps because we lived near an Atlanta center and she actually did air traffic control in Puerto Rico for a while and then in Vermont, and then her and her husband when they were in Vermont, just. He was a controller, too. They decided that they'd rather live in the south and be closer to family. And Mallory had worked with us on her summers in college, and she was in love with it. And we work really well together. My family does, thank the good Lord. And so it was a no brainer for them. Let's move to beautiful Tennessee and just enjoy our lives in the family business.

I love it.

So I'm so happy I got her two years ago now.

Yeah. But they've come into the market and sort of taken the Airbnb, the do it yourself kind of feeling.

That's crazy. That's absolutely not crazy.

Yeah.

And that's one side of the business that's dealing with the property owners. I don't get what people think. Property management's a breeze because that's one part. And then you've got the actual properties, which is another part, and then you've got the guests, which is another part. And then you've got your team, which is another part. So you are dealing with all of these simultaneously. And you, you call yourself a general on the hill, another phrase that you've come up with, but that general on the hill overseeing everything. How, how are you doing it?

Privileged position to have it be the family business. I wasn't hired into a particular role, and those were the duties of my role. That was the routine of my role. With it being a family business. You just gotta keep your finger on the pulse. You gotta keep your ear to the ground. Like, you have to know what's going on at any given time. The businesses that I was watching really, really struggle during pandemic. The reservations team wasn't communicating with the maintenance team. Those managers weren't commuting with housekeeping and laundry. There were walls built around every department. The departments, they weren't communicating. And then throw on top of that, just business relations within the company itself. It just had to have been a mess. They're not communicating. There's got to be a lot of drained relations. And it's just because nobody can see past the wall of their department, really. So when I was kind of coming into my own as general manager, operations manager, just kind of the manager's manager, I was just realizing that a deliberate part of the business has to just be looking at everything, just climbing on top of the hill so that you can see every department, every team, every operation, and you can just get an aerial view on reservations. And is it moving along smoothly or where the patterns are emerging and what can you do to iron out the kinks of those patterns? I could do that with the reservations department and then make sure that that manager felt confident in her position to lead by example and is doing that with reservations department, maintenance department inspections, laundry, housekeeping. On the one hand, I say tear down the walls. Tear down the walls. It's important to have barriers. It's important to have boundaries between departments. But, like, take down the stone walls, if you will. That way, departments can see into other departments and see how when they pass something off, where it goes from there and how it eventually comes around. And it's important for each department to see the full circle on everything. So I just climbed up on the hill, looked at everything, realized that, like, all the departments needed to be communicating better and understanding how they fit into the mechanism together. And so if it being family owned and operated, I could do what I needed to do to make sure that my business was the best it could possibly be. So I just recognized an opportunity to wear, I needed to dislodge myself from being head underwater in whatever certain project was going on or whatever problem was presenting itself or whatever I had to do, and to just look at the whole operation and make sure the managers were comfortable. The managers were confident. They feel well trained. They know I have their back, so that they can lead by example to their people and do that same thing for them. And it just kind of trickles down. I just realized being a general on the hill had to be a part of a Direct Booking Successful business model. Somebody had to be seeing it all.

Yes.

Or else gonna be buried in your little box. Somebody had to be seeing it all.

And where did the term inside out hospitality come from?

Yeah, amazing. Lauren, think about our world leaders. Think about the big corporate leaders. If they had that same mentality, how different would this world be? How different would our lives be?

I know, I know. Like I said, other than like a futon and a bookshelf and some pots for houseplants, like, it's been a really cheap way to train my people and make a difference for our guests and our brand.

I love it.

Essentially free. Like kindness is free. It is free.

Treating people with respect, kindness, and passion. Yeah. And hospitality.

Yeah.

Talking about levels of hospitality, and maybe this comes into your hospitality as a spectrum. You're talking about hospitality on a spectrum. Are you talking about the levels or what does that refer to for me.

Hospitality is a really, really clean, well kept cabin, because that's just showing respect. I don't invite people over to my house and it is dirty. That would be disrespectful to them and their presence and what I think about them. So just even focusing on cleanliness and presentation of the home, if, you know, they're checking in, open the blinds just a little bit, turn on a couple lamps, maybe have spa music playing on the alexa in the background or something. But even just stepping through the door makes that a hospitable experience. They've just had a gnarly road trip. They're tired, they're hungry. They can't wait to have a beer and just stretch out. And the moment they walk through the door, you can offer them that hospitality just through it, being clean and cozy.

And let me add something. Turning the heat on, you know, turning the heat on. You know, if it's winter, turn the heat on before they get there. I took my parents and my daughter. We were in the. In the UK. We went to London for a trip from up north, and we arrived. It was a cold snap, you know, no heat on. The heat had been off for days because they hadn't had anyone in. The place was stuffy. No heat. We turned the heat up as much as we could. We had to go around the house and look for extra blankets and towels so we could sleep. We're talking about old houses. It took at least 24 hours for the heating to really come on fully and really warm the house. And that really had a detrimental effect on our whole vacation. The hospitality that we didn't receive from those managing the property.

Yeah. How simple is that? They see you coming in, they know it's going to be cold, and so they just go up and turn the thermostat up. Like, how. How simple is that?

Yeah, exactly. Not going to cost you anything. I'm not asking if you're walking a big welcome basket. I just need some heat, please.

Yeah. If you walk into a nice, cozy, warm house, you might not think a thing about it, but when you walk into a cold house, you realize just how little they cared about you when you arrived at your business. Back to the spectrum. We don't get very many people checking in our office anymore, but we keep our lobby and our storefront so stinking cute. Like, right now, it's like a mid century modern vintage log cabin lodge theme. And my family and I, we actually visited all sorts of, like, little antique stores in the surrounding states. Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida and stuff. And we found souvenirs for the Smoky mountains in those places. You won't really find them here because people are coming here over the years, getting them and taking them home. So in the surrounding states, we found just tons of these vintage smoky mountain souvenirs. And we have, like, a whole display of them. We also sell candles. We have them locally made by a local craftsman. We brand them. But, like, our lobby is an immersive experience as well. So again, they're just getting in off the road. They've elected to check in at the office, which is just another burden. But the second they walk in, it's so cozy and welcoming. We've got a couch and a fireplace, and we keep the tv on and it's so cute in there. So that's another thing.

Sounds lovely. You might just have guests wanting to stay in the office for their vacation, you know, need to stay in the house. Now. I need to ask you, I need to. I need to talk to you about something else because I noticed something when I was looking through your instagram and you had me roaring with laughter. Let me say, first off, okay, really enjoying what you're creating on Instagram. Now. In some of my training, I use an example of happy cupcake day because I find that, you know, these awareness days in social media, like all these different happy days, national days, whatever. And what I usually see are people using them as filler content. So things that don't connect it at all in their business, they're saying, you know, something like happy cupcake day. You know, nothing else, just a graphic picture of a cupcake. Happy cupcake day. And my whole point is, this is a waste of time. It's a complete waste of time. And you'll just turn people off. You know, you're a baker. Then I could see you using happy Cupcake day. However, you have used unique days like happy smile day, happy weed, your garden day. I know that there's others there too, but you used it in a way to connect with your audience. They are hilarious. So I want to know how and why did you start doing these?

Well, for filler content.

Well, no, don't say it, don't say it.

Genius. That's all I say. It's not filler content. You might have felt like that at the beginning, that it's filler content, but it's not. It's connection, it's engaging, it's engagement, it's getting your face out there. It's getting like your brand out there. I just love them. And there are videos with your sister Mallory.

Like, yes.

You guys must have, I think, you know, you watch these things, you know, how. Why do these people actually work? They're having so much fun. But I think bringing her in and going around and looking at the local area and mispronouncing the company names and the places, it's just. It's entertainment.

It's entertainment. I always thought that I wanted to be on SNL growing up, and then I was like, no, I'll just be a writer for SNL. And it's like, okay, I'll just make TikTok videos for my family. I thought about that. I'll just do that. How did you do that?

From that, from wanting to be on SNL to being a traffic controller in college, like, going to college for that.

Oh, some impressionable millennials. We really sold the dream on going to college and having a career for yourself. Our parents were boomers. We were sold the big dream, Jen, and it's just all been pretty flat.

Right, so you're going back to your roots from here.

Yeah.

You're going back to your roots and the writing and the comedy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's another great thing about just being a part of a family business or a small business is like, you know, you just have the freedom to do this and do just whatever you want. I try anything. Just when I think I've posted the lamest video I've ever made, it's the most. It ends up being the most popular video I've ever made. People are just. The general public are just a bunch of goofballs and everybody wants to laugh. So capitalize on that.

Yep. Yep. That's true. That's true. So all of these things that we've spoken about, how have they helped you, you know, the inside out hospitality, looking at the hospitality spectrum, using a happy call your doctor's day and happy smile. How have they all worked together, helping you with your bookings, with guests, do you think?

Well, it's really quite simple. Like I said earlier, like, cabin is a cabin, it's a rental property. Is a rental property. We all do our best to clean. We all do our best to maintain it. We're all doing the. The same thing. You can offer your k cups, you can offer your freebies, we're all doing the same thing. But what they're going to remember is their interactions with you, their confidence in you, the trust, a comfort they gave you that they make you laugh. Were they really easy to talk to? Did you feel like you were in good hands if you had an issue, were they accessible and communicative? Like, these are the things that they're going to remember and it's going to be so important to them that they're going to remember your company name because they don't want to take a chance of having any other experience when they're in town. They just don't want to take that chance. They were spoiled rotten with Auntie Belham's. They want to stay withAuntie Belham's. So all of that has just caused people to want to remember us so that they and their friends and their family are in good hands the next time that they come here. That's the impact it's had. It's made it so that we're getting more repeat guests and clientele than ever. And even if somebody's not technically a repeat, but like their aunt stayed here and highly recommended us, I'm going to collect that as a repeat. You know, it's not in our numbers, but I'm going to take it as one. Because of your family's word of mouth, because they remembered experiencing us, not our properties, they remembered experiencing us enough to recommend us. So all this fun, all this goofiness, all these cheap tricks and free kindness, people just remember us.

That's great. That's great. And you know, this podcast is direct booking Direct Booking Success. We know the word Direct Booking Success is very subjective. So I want to hear what you think that direct booking Direct Booking Success means.

For me, direct booking Direct Booking Success means if they found you on Airbnb, they're booking with you the next time they come back. And direct booking Direct Booking Success also means I know my guests are saving money by booking directly with us too. I mean it when I say, and maybe not a good stance as a business owner, but I mean it when I say I do want to save my guests money. I really genuinely do. Because I want to save money because I know what I can do with the extra money in my life to help my loved ones and set up my future. Every dollar genuinely counts. And a dollar saved with us might be a dollar they spend in town to help their kid create an extra memory. So I genuinely do want to save my guests money. They can do that by booking directly, not booking on platform with someone else. And so again with the videos and the branding and the communication styles, that's all built to get that direct booking again in the future. Save them money, cut out the middleman. Direct booking Direct Booking Success means a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

I think it's really good what you've said. I think money that your guests can save by booking direct with you, they can then spend it with a restaurant, another local business. It helps them, it helps the local economy, it helps everything. So I loved speaking with you, Lauren. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm gonna put your links in the show notes. I follow on TikTok, Instagram, @auntiebelhams. It's fabulous. You really are. It's entertainment, it's interesting, it's marketing. But on a personal level, if that makes sense. I know you have a special offer for those listening as well, don't you?

Yeah. Look, I know y'all like to come to the Smoky mountains. We're one of the most popular vacation destinations in the country. So if any of y'all are wanting to come visit the smokies, stay over here in Gatlinburg or pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I would obviously love to earn your business. And if you found out about us through Jen's podcast, 15% off of your stay. I'll do it. I'll do it year round. I'll do it. Holidays I'll do 15% off your stay.

Brilliant. So links are in the show notes. Come and look at what Lauren's doing on socials. And yeah, for wanting to go to the smokies, we know where you can stay. Thanks Lauren.

Thank you Jenn. Thanks y'all.

If you've enjoyed listening to this episode, please check out the direct booking Direct Booking Success YouTube channel. All the episodes are available there to be streamed. Make sure to subscribe to the channel so you'll be notified when a new episode drops. And feel free to share the episodes with others you think might benefit from learning more about direct booking. You've probably heard it a thousand times. Just be consistent and the bookings will roll in. But what if I told you that's not the whole story? What if there's a smarter, more efficient way to market your short term rentals and actually see results in the next episode of the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast? I'm going to be revealing why simply being consistent might actually be holding me back and what you should be doing instead. I'll cover practical tips, real life Direct Booking Success stories, and actionable strategies to transform your marketing from frustrating to fabulous. Until then, go out and take action for your own direct booking Direct Booking Success. I'll see you next time. Hey thanks for listening to the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast. For more information about this episode and others, head to the website directbookingDirect Booking Success.com podcast. See you next time.