Airbnb Setup Checklist: How to Get a Short-Term Rental Guest-Ready Fast

Kim Fitzpatrick
So I used spring break. I had seven days of spring break where I was off of teaching and I went out to my property to get it installed. Also, my children were with their dad because it that was like I had to fly out to my property and I got it done in seven days because that’s the time I had. That was the only time I had. And people marveled and I did it again and again. And people were like, “I don’t understand how you do it in seven days. It took me three months.” And I’m like, “I don’t understand how you have the money to wait for three months.”

Cody Crabb
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Cody Crabb, and today I’m talking to Kim Fitzpatrick. Kim is the founder of Launched Host, a company that helps real estate investors across the country get short-term rentals fully set up and guest ready. We’re going to talk about the gaps in that process, what operators often overlook, and what it really takes to scale a service business like this one. Kim, thank you so much for joining me today.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Glad to be here.

Cody Crabb
So for people that aren’t familiar with your world, give us the the quick version. What is Launched Host and what problem is it that you’re solving exactly for investors?

Kim Fitzpatrick
I think the big problem for short-term rental investors is they buy a property and they want to list it on Airbnb, but there’s a lot in the middle that they have overlooked or don’t fully understand, especially first timers. And that includes design and shipping all the furniture to the house and assembling an entire house full of brand new furniture. And that is the problem that my company solves. We do this coast to coast. And we that way we can follow investors as they grow and move into new markets. So it’s it helps them each time they buy a new property to get started a little bit faster.

Cody Crabb
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the the closest I’ve ever come to getting a divorce with my wife is putting together IKEA furniture. So I feel like the well, if you’ve got a dedicated team, that’s probably the better way to go there. No, but that really though, I feel like that is a that’s a major it may not be even a thing that you think about because when you think of purchasing a a rental, you don’t you think about the actual practicalities of it, but like you gotta make it livable first before you can ever make money on that.

Kim Fitzpatrick
That’s very true. Yeah. A lot of people they think about how am I gonna talk to the guests? How do I price the property? All of those things. But before a guest can ever show up, you need to have a bed for them to sleep in and dishes in the cabinets and clean sheets at the ready. And that’s where my company shines.

Cody Crabb
Okay, so see you also said a number that just absolutely blew my mind when you said it before we started recording. You said you can go from a completely empty space to completely guest ready in seven days. Is that right?

Kim Fitzpatrick
That’s right. That is our claim to fame. Most people it takes months and months to do it, but for us, we have a seven-day process where we get started on day one and we are guest ready on day seven.

Cody Crabb
Wow. So give me a little sneak peek into that. Like how much input because my my reflex is to say, well, you’ve probably got this kind of the like the stock stuff all already, but you also said you work with designers and things too. So it sounds like there’s a lot of owner input. So I’d be curious to know how that works on such a short time frame.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, so the install week is a seven-day process. And many times, if I’m honest, we can get it done a lot faster, but we don’t because there’s always unforeseen things that pop up. So we would rather underpromise and over-deliver. So sometimes there’s a plumbing issue or an electrical issue or something that is outside of the scope of what we do that prevents things from getting finished in seven days. But we do finish in seven days and we get the property guest ready. But what that means is the design has had to happen beforehand. And then all of the items are shipped to the house. And once it is go time, it is go time and we wake up. We actually stay in the house, believe it or not. I cannot herd all of our workers in and out of properties from hotels. We stay in the house, we get to find a lot of things that we uncover a lot of problems and prevent them from being discovered by guests when we do that. But we wake up, we go to work, we work until we are just absolutely exhausted. We go to sleep and we repeat it for seven days.

Cody Crabb
And something that you you use the word we there, but when you say we, you actually mean it. You actually told me before we started that you’re you’re pretty hands-on as a as a leader. Tell me a little bit more about how you operate in as a as a hands-on leader.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it’s funny because when I have been building my business, a lot of people tell me I have to act like a CEO, get out of the business, work on the business, not in the business. But you can probably see if this is a visual for the listener that I am in a place that we are installing. We’ve got our signage all over the kitchen cabinets to know where we’re going and what we’re doing. I prefer to build the culture from within the company on the job sites and I prefer to have an admin team that I just task with all of the admin and all of that. And I I get to work with the people and all of the workers here so that we’re building a really strong culture and it’s led by me personally on site.

Cody Crabb
Love that. Yeah, because a lot of people say we’re a family and then they’re, you know, it’s it’s just not that feel. But it sounds like you’re trying to really cultivate that, which is great. So another question I’d have for you. So when people come to you or when people are are talking to you about a situation like this, what is it that they’ve typically underestimated as far as like what needs to be done or or things like that?

Kim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I would say one one potential client that called me one time said, “I don’t understand, doesn’t the furniture come assembled?” And I just laughed. I was like, that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard because no, furniture comes flat packed, not just IKEA, but the way to get furniture shipped quickly to a property is by having to assemble it yourself most of the time. And that’s the way to get launched quicker and to get money back in your pocket. You don’t want to be paying your mortgage on a short-term rental. You want to get it up and running and let the guests pay your mortgage. So yeah, it you have to assemble it. And they do not understand the magnitude of what that is, plus the variety of skills you need from assembling furniture to hanging a TV, curtains, art, mirrors. Washing all the linen, staging all of the furnishings, it’s a variety of skills.

Cody Crabb
Yeah. So your product isn’t even your product isn’t all these indiv or individual things. It’s just the speed because every minute y you don’t have a booking is another minute that revenue’s just walking out the door and you can’t make that money back. It’s just gone. So

Kim Fitzpatrick
That’s exactly it. Like an Airbnb will rent for eight to fifteen hundred dollars a night in the high season, like a typical one that we would install of the size that we do. And that’s eight to fifteen hundred dollars gone every single night that you are not rented. And that clock is ticking and that money is just getting yanked out of your wallet if if we are not speed to launch.

Cody Crabb
I can just if I could just imagine you hearing that money flying out every time you rip off the calendar page. You just see that you can hear the cha-ching go away. So this is this seems like a really neat niche. I’d be curious to know how this kind of how you kind of happened upon it in the first place. Was this something that you were solving for yourself and then went, “This is really hard. I bet people would pay me for this.” Or how how did it come about exactly?

Kim Fitzpatrick
Well, that’s a funny story. I am a single mom and I invested in my first Airbnb. I was a teacher too. And so I would have limited times throughout the school year or the summer or the winter that I could go out to my property and get it up and running. So I used spring break. I had seven days of spring break where I was off of teaching and I went out to my property to get it installed. Also, my children were with their dad because it that was like I had to fly out to my property and I got it done in seven days because that’s the time I had. That was the only time I had. And people marveled and I did it again and again. And people were like, “I don’t understand how you do it in seven days. It took me three months.” And I’m like, “I don’t understand how you have the money to wait for three months.” And so I it just people were marveling and they said, “Please help me, please help me.” And I go, “I think I have a business here.” And then we developed it into a very successful business.

Cody Crabb
That that is the single mommest energy thing I think I’ve ever heard, which is, “What do you mean? I did it because I had to I that’s as much time as I had. So that’s why I did it.” Like that that’s so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. So do you have an example where getting someone open earlier made an actual visible difference to to them? I mean, someone that was maybe stuck or didn’t have the ability to do this themselves.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I would say the biggest thing that we see and the biggest appreciation I get from my clients is the ones that are at the end of the year where they are high income W-2 earners and they’ve learned that they are gonna have to pay seventy or more thousand dollars in taxes. But instead of doing that, they would like to put that as a down payment on a property and if they can get it in service that year, they can. They can write off all of the losses of property. And there have I have missed three Thanksgivings and one Christmas in the last three years doing this because we are trying to get so many people up and running. One client came back with their numbers and said that we saved their their family $320,000 in taxes. My god. And I’ve never made that kind of money to understand how much we’re saving our clients. But when he told me that, I can understand why people beg us to get their properties done in November and December.

Cody Crabb
When you put it this way, it makes a lot of sense because before I was like, I mean, yeah, you’d want to open as soon as you can as but but when you put it this way, like asked to be by the end of the year, it makes sense why this is so urgent because that is a l that’s a whole other house, really. I mean that’s crazy.

Kim Fitzpatrick
It’s insane. And and they are trying to shelter their money from taxes and and and make f sound financial decisions, but they cannot do it on their own. And they can’t do it during the holidays when they have families and jobs and commitments. So that’s why our company is extra important at the end of the year.

Cody Crabb
So you’ve built this into a nationwide company now. You’ve got designers, you’ve got install crews, you’ve got projects all over the country. What is what have you l kind of learned building some of the b building this and kind of scaling to that degree?

Kim Fitzpatrick
What have I learned? My gosh. I mean, we I don’t think we have enough time. But one thing I’ve learned just as a business like from one business owner to another is that scaling is incredibly difficult on a national level where you have so many locations. But we have we have we’ve we’ve done this really cool thing where we have added firefighters to our roster for install. Because firefighters are they are natural born entrepreneurs. They’re always looking for something to do in their free time when they’re off shift. And they’re very mechanically inclined, very handy, very team oriented. And it’s a perfect fit for my company. So, yes, we employ off duty firefighters to come and assist us. And it’s been great for both the our reputation of safety and trust. And also to just get stuff done really quickly.

Cody Crabb
If if anyone knows how to move quick, it would be a firefighter. I guess that’s true. Yeah.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Right? Yeah, they can handle the chaos. Nobody’s dying. It’s fine.

Cody Crabb
Yeah, you you mentioned this off handed to offhandedly in before we started recording. And I was at first I was like, “That’s random.” Like re I thought you must have some kind of firefighter connection or something to to have that pick that up. But then the more you explained, I was like, the how how could you not use firefighters? It seems like a perfect fit, really.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Well, if I’m honest, my ex husband was a firefighter and my son is twenty and he is a firefighter now too. So I do have a connection, but I didn’t connect the dots for the longest time. But once somebody said, “I have a firefighter friend that could help you,” I went, “Okay. Here we go. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Cody Crabb
Yeah. So and and there’s firefighters everywhere you go. I mean it’s it’s genius. It’s absolutely genius. Yeah. How do you how do you work that angle? Like is there is there an organization type thing that is is this people that you have contacted personally?

Kim Fitzpatrick
So they have a company. There is a man that’s a fireman that has a company that has a like a fireman moving company. And he and I talked because I needed a little extra labor at one of my locations. And as we were talking to see if his people would be a right fit to assist in one of these huge homes that I had done. He said, “Well, I’m thinking about franchising.” And I was like, ding, ding, ding. You’re my guy. And so I said, “I can tell you what cities you’re gonna go to next as you franchise because I know where I’m going next.” So we have we have we’re we work really well together. We are not the same company. We’re individual companies, but we lean on each other a lot for getting jobs done.

Cody Crabb
Yeah, that’s that that’s always good when you’ve got like a it’s kind of like finding a contractor you really like. Like you it’s you’re not you don’t really operate in the same way. Like you’re not the same company, but it’s just changes everything, I bet. So we’re but this is this is really interesting to me because I feel like this is one of those it’s a niche that people think of like, that’d be good, but the more you learn about it, the more you kind of go, “Yeah, this seems like this seems like how…”

Kim Fitzpatrick
Exactly.

Cody Crabb
“…how could anybody survive without this?” For someone that’s buying their first short term rental, what’s a mistake that you see people make that they’re not ready where they’re not ready for guests? The f what’s the things that they always forget when they’re starting out?

Kim Fitzpatrick
I would say if they are not using my company, they are overlooking, they they love design. Design is easy, they want to pick the pretty things and they want to make the house really pretty, but they overlook safety and they overlook the home maintenance type things. So with the safety, they forget that they don’t have a continuous handrail or that they don’t they forget to put in the fire extinguishers. Because they’re thinking throw pillows and wallpaper and all the cute stuff. So I think it’s really important that they consider safety so that if somebody was to trip and fall at their house, they had somebody that’s short-term rental safety certified, like my company, or they can be themselves, they can go take the test and be themselves, but they’re better protected and they’re seeing their home not through a different lens that’s gonna keep them safe in case of. You know, an unforeseen issue with a guest.

Cody Crabb
Yeah, safety is one of those things that kind of you don’t really think about it until it’s too late. So so if you have to kind of make yourself go out of your way to to think about it, I guess. It isn’t as flashy like you said.

Kim Fitzpatrick
No, it’s not nearly as fun to say, “Hey, owner, you need a hand railing or you need a well lit path to the door, or I don’t know why, but you have no fire or smoke detectors in your house at all.” So we will look for those things and we will advise and we will install all the safety things they need to be compliant. And we have saved people a number of times. One one gu one client, his design team… You they converted an office to a bedroom, but it only had one door. It didn’t have a secondary egress. And I said, “You’re not gonna even pass your short-term rental permit unless you have two egresses.” So we created we changed the design and the layout, we created another egress and didn’t lose his sleeping capacity, which is really important for revenue as well. So we will help people with their safety issues that their designers may not know about.

Cody Crabb
So I I’d love to hear like, you know, you’ve kind of given me a sneak peek at a million different things that you do. But like give me some give me some more. Like what what are some things that you do that I that might surprise me if I heard them?

Kim Fitzpatrick
Well, we partner with the design firm too, so that we can be the one-stop shop for a client. And so just like we have our group of firefighters, I also have a design firm as well that is our in-house design firm, but also works outside of us, but partners with us. And one thing that’s really important in your design is that you need to have space planning so that your guests feel like they’re really enjoying the space. They’re not bumping into things or things aren’t awkward. A lot of times a single family home turns into a short-term rental, but you put more heads in beds than is typical of a single family that might have maybe four or five people in the home. Now all of a sudden the home has eight or 10 or 12, sometimes more in certain markets. But the dining room doesn’t accommodate 10. And the couch in the living room accommodates a family of five, but not a group of ten. So it’s really important to have professional design where we can sit as many as we can sleep in all locations around the house.

Cody Crabb
Yeah, it’s things like that that I suppose you wouldn’t really think of because you’re kind of used to people are typically used to arranging a house for the people that live in it, not necessarily for the amount of people that could theoretically s stay in it.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Exactly. If you put two to four people in a bedroom, all of a sudden you need a lot more chairs and you need a lot more storage and you need places for luggage in addition to big beds and whatnot. Yeah. So I think professional short-term rental design is really, really important that a lot of people overlook the importance of.

Cody Crabb
Yeah. Well this is this is really interesting. Thanks so much for for giving me giving us all this insight. It’s the the short-term rental people on that that are listening to this are gonna get a lot out of this one, especially. So just a couple more questions as were winding down here. What’s what’s an issue that you’ve caught that probably would have ended up in a bad review? Because it sounds like you’ve done this a lot of times by now.

Kim Fitzpatrick
My gosh. Okay, the biggest one, and it happens the most often: 70% of our project homes have a c at least one shower in the house that has cold water and it does not have hot water in the shower. If you were to hire a handyman to help install the property and set up all the furnishings, and they’re not spending the night in the house and they’re not using the house like a guest might, they would never know that there is just room temperature or cold water in the shower. And that would definitely get you a low review.

Cody Crabb
Yeah, look, I am not a picky person. I went I’ve stayed at hotels that would shock people and I’m like whatever, it’s fine. That’s the one thing. I that’s the other than maybe like bed bugs or like rats. Like that is the one thing that I would be like, no, that bad review. Yeah, right.

Kim Fitzpatrick
Yep. Yep. We we I hate to say it, we have found mouse before. We have found we had a ladybug infestation once, which you think is kind of cute and fun until you try to go to sleep and then it’s not. So we have eradicated several pests and rodents. But the cold showers is the one that comes up so often. Like and it’s because they get new fixtures that are all pretty. And the handyman or whoever is installing those fixtures didn’t adjust the scald guard. It’s a super simple fix and often my team will come in and fix it. But dang, we have taken a lot of cold showers unknowingly. So

Cody Crabb
Taking ta like you said, taking the time to stay there, I mean that that alone, I mean you’re gonna come across the problems just like a guest would. So I that is such a smart way to do it because you’re you’re just putting yourself in their shoes for yeah.

Kim Fitzpatrick
That’s exactly it. Every time we find something that’s kind of horrifying, we’re just glad it’s us and not a guest. So we’re like, “Hey, you know, it’s like this is terrible. It happened to us, but thank God it happened to us and not your guest.”

Cody Crabb
Yeah, yeah, wow. So looking ahead, what’s what’s next for Launched Host? It sounds like you’re busy, but I’d love to hear if you have like future plans for for the business or expanding or or what’s what’s next for you?

Kim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, we’ve really done a great job in the short term rental space. And more recently, hotel owners are giving us a call. And we have we have installed two hotels at this point. And we could see we’re gonna have a whole division that is doing hotels real soon. So we’re very excited about getting into the boutique hotel space and really helping boutique hotel owners be their boots on the ground and get them up and running because. Our our most recent client coming up has an 81 room hotel. And there are a lot of logistics in an eighty-one room hotel that will remain operational during the install.

Cody Crabb
That’s even more impressive. Holy cow. So you’re just doing it kind of piece by piece sort of thing? Yeah.

Kim Fitzpatrick
And so we are laying out the plans so as not to disturb the guests that will be staying at the hotel, but also to be getting things done and getting it up and running quickly because this person has invested a boatload of money into this hotel and he needs to get it online as soon as possible.

Cody Crabb
Holy cow. Well, I I c congrats. I mean, I that sounds like a lot of work and I mean I’m I’m happy for you, but also like yikes. I mean, holy cow. But no, that’s that’s awesome that you’ve started to kind of branch into that. I feel like with such a once you’ve got such a niche and you’ve kind of started to perfect this perfect it, I mean it starts to open up other other possibilities like that. So this has been really awesome, Kim. If somebody is in in short term rentals, they’ve they are they’re in this situation where they need to get something turned around. It’s August. It’s starting to be the close to the end of the year. I mean it’s not really, but it’s getting there. How can someone get in touch with you if they wanna if they wanna work with you or or get get some help with with their rentals?

Kim Fitzpatrick
The best place to find us is launchedhost.com. Super simple, just like our name. It sounds a little bit like launch toast, but it is launched like a rocket and host like you are hosting a property. But launchedhost.com is the best way. And then you can find me on social media under my name Kim Fitzpatrick on Facebook and Launched Host on Instagram.

Cody Crabb
Fantastic. Well, thank you. I think this has been a really memorable episode. I’m gonna remember, especially the firefighters for some reason is really gonna stick out to me. But no, this was this was great. We appreciate your time. And listeners, we’ll see you on the next one. Kim, take care. We’ll see you later.