Kiana: how she replaced her finance job with Airbnb arbitrage

0:00 in today's episode we're talking with Kiana who was able to quit her job with just a couple of properties she had a 10year sin in finance but she quickly realized that she wanted to pursue Financial Freedom now she's onto her second property that's cash only $3,200 per month we get into a lot of tactical stuff in today's episode by how she's able to select her properties and also how she overcomes a daunting task of landlord negotiations her story is awesome I'm sure you're going to learn a lot so let's get right into it all right so we got Kiana here uh who just started her air BB Journey a few months ago if I'm not mistaken um so just wanted to chat with her she's you know doing very well you know for with the property and so Keon if you don't mind just kind of go in discussing your background and then we'll kind of go into you know why you want to start this whole you know Journey with you know airbnbs and just entrepreneurship in general yeah definitely well thank you so much for having me I'm very honored so I started this originally I was in Mexico City for a vacation and a friend kind of introduced me to Airbnb Arbitrage I've always believed in Financial Freedom I also worked in finance for over a decade so I kind of have a little knowledge in that I started researching this for like the last six months I went through different free workshops and then I found your community joined it and that's kind of what helped me pull the trigger to quit my job 3 months later and then I got my first property a couple months ago that has been going very well and then I just signed my second property that's going to go live in a couple days so essentially the reason why I started was just for the

1:17 Financial Freedom wow that's awesome yeah I didn't I didn't realize you quit your job so can you talk about that cuz I know in my mind or just like other people's minds they get a lot of anxiety when they're like they're starting this new business venture you know they quit their job so you know kind of gave you that confidence to be able to you know take that leap right away honestly I think a lot of the research a lot of the content that you provided as well the free workshops but then once I joined your community having all those resources and then having like the calculator the property feedback kind of gave me more confidence in my decisions and kind of understanding the different real estate markets I also have some rental properties back in Seattle and so I think having that knowledge of just kind of how real estate Works helps but I never was introduced to the Arbitrage side of it which I think is very interesting and lower risk so yeah let's talk about the first property what made you you know kind of attracted to that market you know how did you talk to the landlord to kind of convince convince you if you can kind of just walk us through you kind of from start to finish of how how that first property came uh came to be so I was looking at a couple different markets but I wanted to choose places where at least I knew someone so my best friend lives in Arizona and so I started doing research there I found actually a company that helped me acquire the property and kind of did the conversations with the landlord CU I tried it myself I was not as successful so I kind of delegated it off and I thought that was another good way for me to learn as well and so that's how I

2:35 kind of chose that market close to my best friend also just having a company that helped me found the perfect property for me yeah I think that's a really good point that you bring up just because you know there we all have our strengths and weaknesses right and so like one of my biggest weaknesses is you know like I kind of like like to think about the big picture I don't really like to be in the day-to-day and so that's when you know I started figuring out about virtual assistance and then you know delegating those tasks and that really freed up my know kind of mental capacity to go and you know do more iic activities so you know right off the bat it sounds like I mean obviously I'm sure you could have gone to the point where you could be comfortable talking to these landlords but you know you kind of found something that you weren't as strong at and then you delegated it to someone that is as is good at right yeah so so with that property um in Arizona they found as far as like numbers go I know you said it's doing very well like what what do the numbers look like and what were you you know kind of projecting when you first started and found the property so the original projection on the conservative side was about $2,500 a month essentially that is what I'm at now so we did the Airbnb for the first two months and then we actually were able to find a one-year tenant and so it still hit the same conservative Benchmark awesome yeah I mean you you get the best of both worlds you're in this situation it sounds like Okay so let's kind of talk about uh you know kind of step back a little bit and talk about some of the the challenges you might have faced you know when starting this business cuz obviously you know like there's it's all cool you know when you hear about the cool success

3:52 stories I'm sure you kind of had to go through some rough patches and hurdles you had to overcome so what are some of those you know challenges that you face and how did you overcome them I would say one of the hardest challenges is finding the market because it is there's so many saturated markets but I think there are different little smaller markets that you can look at and then understanding what the market was so I had probably spent six months kind of just going around the whole entire United States kind of researching understanding short-term laws I think that is kind of the higher risk on the sides of things so that was my biggest challenge and then I started joining these Facebook Airbnb short-term groups kind of just seeing what locations were popping up more frequently and then that kind of helped me and then your team also created that Excel sheet of kind of the markets which I thought was very helpful cuz it's kind of just consolidates all the information or just it's more efficient and also air DNA I think that's a great resource and that was very helpful because it's like you reduce all the calculations and manual work that you have to do so you can kind of export and kind of figure it that way so I would say that was the hardest part and I think from there landlord Outreach is obviously a difficult part if you don't have experience in it and it can so that's why I kind of tried it myself but then I found other resources joining the cohort meetings and hearing other people's stories reading about them also in the comments in the community I think is very helpful and so landlord Outreach was another difficult part and then setting up the property I think no

5:09 matter how much you prepare no matter how much you like pre-order all the list like there's always things that happen but I think it's just being adaptable and able to just like problem solve very quickly you essentially you have to do that when you're host as well when things rise in within the property and something doesn't go well for the guest so I think it's a very good stepping stone to learn how to problem solve as quickly as possible yeah 100% being entrepreneurs is just putting out little fires you know every single day and then you know eventually you know that those wins will add up to where you know FES of your time but love that you know your story as far as like the analysis paralysis right cuz you said you spent about 6 months so how did you overcome that cuz I know a lot of people get stuck in that and you know someone that you know might have spent 6 months you know doing all the research you might have been like oh like I've seen so many different things there's like so many different markets I could go after like how did you kind of start honing in and get away from that analysis paralysis I think I started tracking different markets a little closer and looking at the trends and so once I saw like the three-month Trend it kind of made me a little more comfortable either more confident or less confident within the market and then the property feedback so even when I did the Outreach your team would do a property feedback for me and then I'd learn more from that like what to look for and then finally I was like what do I have to lose and everything to gain I mean the overhead cost is not that much and the return is so high so the worst case scenario is if no one rents out the Airbnb I can just do

6:26 another midterm long-term lease and I just don't have cash flow but okay we're in the process so I think that's the mentality I had that there's always an exit strategy and that doesn't mean not completely having pay out of pocket but it's just okay we learned from this property let's learn to another one and so I think from kind of reducing all or going through every fear that I had and finding a solution for it kind of built the confidence for me to just finally pull the trigger yeah because you know you could do all the research in the world and you can have you know the perfect properties everything led up but if you're not actually going to you know move forward then you know nothing's going to change right and so I love you know that you got the confidence you know with the team being part of a community that can kind of give you that confidence to you know move forward so you know love to hear that so let's kind of talk about your entrepreneurship Journey you know is that something that you've always had on the back of your mind like this is what you want to do like where where did that kind of desire to become an Entre entrepreneur uh come to be I think there are two folds to when I went to school originally I wanted to be an entrepreneur my dad and my family has always been on that side so it's kind of something I grew up in my mom always had a corporate job so having that entrepreneur side also with kind of the W2 life I went to school tried to climb the corporate ladder and then I finally decided I was like you know what I did the best I can I learned as much as I could and I think I gained a lot of great skill sets from it and Entrepreneurship was always in the back of my mind Financial Freedom was always

7:43 on the front of my mind and so from that I think gaining that experience and knowledge and just being able to kind of redirect it to the entrepreneur side is very helpful so I think it's always been on the Forefront and just finding the right opportunity no 100% I think you know kind of you know similar to my parents were entrepreneurs they were very successful at it just and they had kind of were owner operators right so they always kind of Shadow you know told me to like hey stay away from you know like the restaurant business you know whatever that they were doing and so that kind of always put fear in the back of my mind but you know once you overcome that and realize like if you follow a blueprint of someone that's been there and you know you trust that person then you know it it can you know definitely work out so you know sounds like we have similar stories from that from that standpoint yeah so let's kind of talk about kind of more tactical stuff so for your very first property we'll talk about your second property here in a second what are some ways that you looked at the property and were like okay I'm going to be able to differentiate myself because of X Y and Z cuz obviously you know that's you know big you know that's something that's really crucial in this business so what were some ways that you were able to differentiate from your competition I ended up in Scottdale which is the last place I thought I would for the first property because it's so saturated and very popular destination but what I noticed when I was going to just Airbnb there were a lot of bachelor and bachelorette themes and I wanted to stare away from that just because of the clientele and kind of those are more seasonal based and the property I found was right by a golf course so I kind of

9:01 just redirected the theme for myself into more luxury and it came furnish which is very nice so it was furnish luxury and then I went to boho cuz I think the boho clientele is something that I'm more tailored to so I kind of created the Airbnb to be more of a place that I would want to stay at and then make it as comfortable for me and then when I got to the property I noticed I have a lot of friends with children so it's like you don't always want to carry cribs and everything so I wanted to make it kids baby friendly and kids friendly and so I added that feature into it to kind of separate myself along with the workspace so I think my whole approach was to se go away from The Bachelor parties and party scenes in Scottdale kind of theme and more for the luxury for kind of like the PGA to waste management go for the more family I think was how I was able to separate myself yeah you know that that's really an awesome stuff right there because I think a lot of people try to follow the herd you know especially in in know in a market like scotdale and a lot of people are moving towards the bachelor Bachelor at parties you know a couple things with those number one your properties get a lot more wear and tear on those just cuz there a lot of parties you know people getting drunks things like that and then number two like when you do kind of have your target audience to go after you know especially in families in this case and obviously kids can be rough sometimes in the properties but you know your neighbors are going to be a lot friendlier with you your clientele it's going to be a lot more respectful and so I I really like that I you know that you

10:18 were going towards that instead of just trying to chase the dollars where you know it might have been a lot easier to goe the with the Bachelor or Bachelorette theme so yeah let's talk about your second property so is it in the same Market where you're like okay I I want to start scaling you know with the economies of scale that I now have or did you completely find a different Market there no it's 10 minutes away from the first property and the reason why I actually end up choosing that was because the management company I'm working for kind of had another contract and they're like well we already did this one so kind of pieces came together and they're like well if we find another property for you will it work and I was like perfect found one 10 minutes away kind of the same exact s more for the luxury side family oriented and it also came furnished and so I was like well if they're both next to each other my best friend lives down the street I mean it kind of just makes sense but I am looking to expand outside of there but right now it just seems like Scottdale is working aesome stuff and the economy scale is way way better at that point cuz you have the cleaners the handyman you know all your team in place already and then you know they're they're grateful because they get more business as well so I think you know really comes with you know that so so let's talk about now the kind of the scaling part cuz obviously the setup part you know it does takes some upfront time right but once you you know go live you know we always talk about the systems scaling you know making sure that we have all these processes in place so it doesn't just turn into another full-time job so how you know talk me to talk to me about

11:36 your like kind of weekly process of you know how you manage it how long it takes you now that everything's kind of up and up in life I'm very fortunate in the sense that I probably spent about 4 hours a week on it just kind of just watching it making sure there's no maintenance things or repairs and just following kind of where the guests are and whatnot the management company is very good at what they do as well but I think I will be able to scale pretty big because of how I'm able to delegate and I think that's really important because when I first my first month I was kind of the micro manager CU I was like trying to be in control I was very fearful and I was like well I kind of have to trust the process trust the system and so now that I've kind of overcame that hump after the first month I was like you know what okay and I think I received I gain more time from that so I was probably spending like let's say 10 hours a week before and now from just kind of trusting the process and letting it go and just putting out the fires as they come I'm able to probably just spend like four hours a week more or less yeah and I think that's one of the biggest things that I realize when you know starting your entrepreneurship journey is hiring the right people and then just let them do their thing right cuz I know like I'm the same way like I wanted to like micromanage every little thing you know I was getting burnt out you know the people that I was managing were getting burnt out so it's just not a good environment for anyone but if you hire make that ride higher at the at the very beginning then it becomes way easier and your life and everyone else's life will be you know much better from that cool so let's Also let's talk about like kind

12:53 of your six Monon to 12 month road map you know where do you want to be you know obviously you quar your job so you have that time that to be able to dedicate to that so what what are some of your goals here for the next you know 6 to 12 months the next 6 months well I have my next three months three months is to get another property so pretty much a property every quarter I think it's going to be the goal for the next six month L more or less and then from there we'll kind of see where it takes probably want to go for bigger Properties or go International but I'm actually traveling right now so since I quit my job I've just been traveling and kind of doing market research that way I think it's more fun yeah my next six months couple more properties 12 months we'll see kind of where it takes off to I think it everything moves so fast especially when you scale right so so you're trying to like take that you know kind of time off you know while you know seeing the world and also you know great thing about this business and you know any business that I was going to choose like had to be done like where I could just do it at you know on my laptop or my on my phone right because I think you know with Financial Freedom is not only the money but it's also the time and location Freedom that comes with that so I think I'm sure that was a big consideration for you as well yes it's definitely the free time kind of use the creative space so I started writing a book kind of to write about my experience and things like that and so so I think having that freedom and having that energy in the creative space from leaving like the corporate job I think helps a lot and you're able to find other opportunities it's like Airbnb Arbitrage so and we'll see where else comes from it yeah and I didn't

14:11 know you were writing a book uh once it's done let us know so we can kind of publish on our on our channels as well I appreciate it so yeah let's you know to wrap this up you know let's just talk about what's um some piece of advice that you would give to you know Aspire entrepreneur that wants to start an airb business or just whatever business in general like what would you say to that person I would tell them to that preparation is key of course diligence but also just to trust yourself and know that if you've already done the research then all you have to do is just kind of take that leap of faith and from there you already problem solved probably a lot of other things that you don't realize on your day-to-day life or in your day job or your business that you have so this is kind of the same thing uncertainty is really great you never know what's going to come from it so I think finding the right Community finding the right support and know that you're not alone especially if you find that right one and so I think that's very helpful awesome well appreciate the insights thanks for the time ke was uh good to chat with you and uh yeah we'll talk to you soon thank you appreciate it