How Quentin West Rebuilt a Global Short-Term Rental Empire After Almost Going Bankrupt

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Quentin West, founder of Shortcut to Superhost, who shares his journey in the short-term rental industry. Quentin discusses his initial struggles, the lessons learned from his failures, and how he built a successful coaching business to help others optimize their rental portfolios. He emphasizes the importance of profitability over gross income, innovative marketing strategies, and the significance of having the right team. Quentin also shares insights on scaling his business through co-hosting and identifying unique properties for investment.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Quentin West’s Website
    • Quentin West on Instagram
    • Quentin West on Facebook
    • Get access to free course: text SUPERHOST to 26786

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Quentin West (00:00)
  within five months, I had no money left. I kept seeing my account go lower and lower and lower, and I kept thinking it was going to bounce back.

  And it never did. And so I’d look up one day about five months in, I sold everything that I owned. ⁓ I had to start barring quarters for my kids piggy bank just to feed our family.

  Michelle Kesil (01:52)
  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Quentin West, who is a leading expert in the short-term rental industry and founder of Shortcut to Superhost. So excited to have you on the show today, Quentin.

  Quentin West (02:11)
  Thanks a lot, Michelle. I’m happy to be here.

  Michelle Kesil (02:14)
  I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re helping people scale their short-term rental businesses. So let’s dive in.

  Quentin West (02:24)
  Let’s do it.

  Michelle Kesil (02:26)
  First off, for those who are not familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is?

  Quentin West (02:33)
  Yeah, so I’m the CEO and founder of Shortcut to Superhost, and we specialize in helping short-term rental operators start, optimize, or scale their portfolio. So whether you’re just getting started, you want to get your first Airbnb or short-term rental, or you have a 200-plus unit portfolio or anything in between, you are our ideal client.

  Michelle Kesil (02:55)
  Awesome. And is this outside like or inside all of the US?

  Quentin West (03:00)
  That’s all over the world. So we’ve operated in over 15 countries to date, over 2,500 units that we’ve personally optimized and helped ⁓ increase income on, build out systems and portfolios, and help people get started.

  Michelle Kesil (03:18)
  Awesome. How did you get started with this? How did you develop these skills and get to this place?

  Quentin West (03:26)
  Yeah, I would say by failing a lot. ⁓ The reason why we’re doing this today is because at one point not understanding optimization almost took me to bankruptcy. So I started my business in 2019 by accident. I got into real estate sales as an agent and I didn’t make any money the first three months. So I got hit with a foreclosure notice and I put my house on Airbnb just to try to pay some bills. So I moved back in with mom and dad.

  put it up for rent. And I was planning on moving back in a few months when things stabilized, but I made about $1,000 in profit the first month, about $1,500 the second month. And by the third month, it was pretty evident that this was going to be a big opportunity. So I learned about Airbnb arbitrage, where you rent a property in sub-lease on Airbnb. And after your rent, your utilities, and everything else, you take home whatever’s left over.

  And when I learned about that, I went straight to Zillow, I started calling landlords. I put that first unit on a credit card and it started making money right away. First month about $1,200 in profit after all expenses. And I grew that really quick. I used credit stacking to get 0 % interest business credit. And over about two and a half years, I built that portfolio to 47 units in three states.

  making about $130,000 to $150,000 a month. ⁓ Within a five-month period of making a big investment, ⁓ everything kind of fell apart. I grew too fast. I didn’t look at any of the data. I had no idea how profitable I was. I had revenue leaking through every crack you could think of.

  And within five months, I had no money left. I kept seeing my account go lower and lower and lower, and I kept thinking it was going to bounce back.

  And it never did. And so I’d look up one day about five months in, I sold everything that I owned. ⁓ I had to start barring quarters for my kids piggy bank just to feed our family.

  ⁓ And I’ve got this huge liability now, 75,000 a month in rent, tons of utility costs, cleaning costs, and over 100 creditors a day calling me. And so that’s…

  where this business kind of spurred from through my process of fixing my own mistakes, hiring mentors with money I didn’t have to fix problems that I should have planned for. ⁓ And then after coming out of that, you know, fast forward a year and a half, two years later, ⁓ people were surprised to see me out at all. You know, the people that actually knew what was going on. And so they started asking me questions because they saw that I was hardly working then.

  You know, before I was working 24-7, I was always working, flying back and forth from multiple states, managing tons of teams, launching properties myself, building all the furniture. It was a nightmare. And so I started getting a lot of attention. People wanted help. I coached probably 20 people for free before I ever charged anyone because I frankly just liked doing it. ⁓ And then I started feeling

  taken advantage of people weren’t showing up for meetings. And I was, you know, I had one experience where, you know, I drove pretty significant ways for free to meet the guy. And he just kind of ghosted me. And I was like, that’s it. I’m, know, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna coach anymore. And then someone offered to pay me hourly to coach them virtually on zoom. I was like, this could be something like I haven’t gotten paid for this yet. And then after that first client, I started charging

  everyone else that asked. I realized it was worth a lot of money. People were seeing some great success. They were going out and hitting $10,000 a month within six months. And the business slowly grew. We went from $80,000 in the first half year to over a million the second year, and we’re continuing to grow from there. And at this point, we’ve worked with a little over 1,200 clients in 15 countries worldwide. It’s been a lot of fun.

  Michelle Kesil (08:32)
  Wow, that’s incredible that you were able to almost build twice your business.

  Quentin West (08:39)
  Yeah, literally. Build it, destroy it, and then build it again.

  Michelle Kesil (08:45)
  So what were the main takeaways from the first time where things kind of went south to rebuilding the second time that we’re able to bring you success this round?

  Quentin West (08:58)
  Definitely that income, like gross income is vanity. Net profit is where you get your sanity from. I don’t remember exactly how that saying goes, but it’s so true. You got to know your bottom line. What units are profitable? Does it make sense to renew this lease? After I went back and started fixing my business, I realized I was so busy.

  that I didn’t even stop to think before I renew leases, whether they were profitable or not. I multiple leases I had just renewed for a second year and I was negative the first year. I didn’t make any profit. And I was so busy just working that I didn’t realize that. And so there were so many cases like that where I just grew for gross sake, not for actual profit.

  Because I wanted big business. I wanted to hit multiple seven figures, get to 10 million years fast as I could, and didn’t really care about all the small details that are actually what help a business grow to that point.

  Michelle Kesil (10:44)
  Yeah, that makes sense. So how did Shortcut 2 Superhost get built from all of this?

  Quentin West (10:46)
  Thanks, guys.

  Yeah, so when people started asking me to coach them for free ⁓ or to coach them, ⁓ you know, I never thought I would be traveling the world speaking on stages like I went to Dubai this year, Ohio, I’m going to Vegas again next week. ⁓ I never really saw myself doing that until we started seeing such great results. And I realized the impact that I could have by sharing everything I learned.

  And then that’s really when it became a big goal of mine to grow that side of the business. I’ve really enjoyed it as much or more than actually building a real estate portfolio because we saved countless properties from foreclosure at this point. our ideal client typically is not out there thriving currently. They’re in a bad situation where they

  They made some bad decisions like I did. They invested in some properties they probably shouldn’t have. They didn’t run their numbers firsthand. They just thought because it looked like a good area, it would make sense. ⁓ And so they come to us and I get to use the creative side of my brain that ⁓ runs through a thousand different ideas every day and help other people get out of the holes they’ve dug for themselves. ⁓ So when I realized that,

  the impact we can make, that’s when it became very apparent that that was the next step to take.

  Michelle Kesil (12:31)
  Absolutely. Can you share some examples of these creative ways that you support people to, yeah, changes or circumstances?

  Quentin West (12:32)
  Thank you.

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we’ve done a lot of different things. One that pops up right on top of my head was just the way that we market properties. ⁓ You know, if you have just a standard single family home, it’s going to be difficult to get too creative. know, obviously we can take different photos, we can design the property, you know, different ways. But the one that comes top of mind is a lady that had a ⁓ like a nature retreat and

  It just wasn’t really represented well online. ⁓ know, very basic images, looked like your average Airbnb. ⁓ And so she had a very difficult time even competing at an average level. And so, you we came in and kind of acted as a consultant for the design of her property, how it should look online, building out her brand and her image for that property, identifying what her ultimate dream was for it and her vision.

  and putting that on a website that transferred over that vision. Because when people see a property, most people don’t have a ton of imagination. If it doesn’t stand out to them right away, they’re not going to pay you their money, especially a premium rate like a property like that should demand. And so after helping her get all of that set up and properly marketed, we took her from making about three grand a month to 15, 20,000 a month.

  ⁓ huge improvement revenue just because of the way it was marketed ⁓ the property was always great you know she always had you know pretty good images and ⁓ and and structure for the retreat itself it just wasn’t shown to the right people the right way

  Michelle Kesil (14:29)
  Yeah, makes sense. Marketing is everything and sometimes that’s not everyone’s strength.

  Quentin West (14:35)
  Yep, absolutely. Absolutely.

  Michelle Kesil (14:38)
  What are you most focused on right now when it comes to solving or scaling the next thing in your business?

  Quentin West (14:45)
  Yeah, I would say building out a large co-hosting company. ⁓ We’ve kind of dropped the whole arbitrage strategy because we realized it has too many limitations. You know, at one point I was spending $75,000 to $80,000 a month in rent for our portfolio. And that comes with a lot of stress.

  You know, not only do you have to worry about the owner not renewing the lease or increasing your rent or even taking over and becoming a competitor of yours. ⁓

  but you don’t get any of the upside of actual ownership. So you’re investing all of this money with no tax benefits and a lot of stress. So what we decided to start doing this year, ⁓ and at first we were doing it at high level for clients, ⁓ is get into the co-hosting space. So with co-hosting, the major difference between property management is typically you’re not managing cleaning and maintenance. You’re managing pricing, guest communications, and marketing.

  all things that we’re really strong at already from the work that we’ve been doing on other host properties. ⁓ And so we had a lot of lead flow from clients that maybe they didn’t want to coach. They just wanted someone to do it for them. So we started placing co-hosting properties with other hosts that we trained or vetted. And that went really well. We placed about 150 units in 90 days.

  But we realized there’s a bigger opportunity in just taking those for ourselves. We built this big machine where we could close, some weeks we close 30 properties. If those bring in $500 a month, that adds up really quick. And so now our most immediate goal is to scale past 1,000 units for co-hosting. And at that point, we’ll stop and take a breather, determine if we want to just sell the property and

  exit or if we want to keep building. But I think that is one of our biggest opportunities now. And then on the side, in the meantime, we are taking our cash and looking towards purchasing hotels. I think ultimately buying real estate is a big long-term opportunity for anyone. But I’m a big believer that you need the cash flow first. So, you know, if you’re listening to this podcast, look at your cash flow because

  If don’t have the cash flow to buy at high rate, it’s going to take you a decade to build a big portfolio. And so I’m a big believer again, until you hit $20,000 to $50,000 a month in cash flow that you can just dump into buying real estate, or you learn creative financing at a really high level, it’s going to be really hard and slow to buy.

  Michelle Kesil (18:14)
  Yeah, definitely. Those are some exciting goals that you’re working on and yeah, great advice. Are you working with investors in your coaching program or it’s just like Airbnb hosts? Like who are your kind of ideal mentees?

  Quentin West (18:21)
  Thanks.

  Yeah, deal menses are typically ⁓ current or new host. ⁓ So it could be an investor, someone that wants to get started in short terminals. ⁓ And we’re also working with investors on outside deals that we’re doing, are looking for hotels. We’re taking on limited partners for anyone that ⁓ has capital that wants to put into a deal like that and have a piece of equity and cash flow. ⁓

  Yeah, would say primarily existing hosts ⁓ or people that want to get started.

  Michelle Kesil (19:13)
  Awesome. And what would you say are some of the main keys that have made the biggest difference in you being able to scale at such a rapid rate?

  Quentin West (19:13)
  Thank

  People. Having the right people. ⁓ You know, at the end of the day, I’m just a one guy. I can only do so much. I could be the best performer in the world, but a team is going to outperform me any day of the week. ⁓ And so our company didn’t really start getting to high levels until I found people I could depend on ⁓ that cared about the success of the business as much as me.

  Michelle Kesil (19:57)
  Yeah, absolutely. The right team can definitely take you far.

  Quentin West (20:02)
  Yep.

  Michelle Kesil (20:05)
  What are some of the ways that you scope out what good properties are? Is there a certain criteria or checklist that you mentally go through as you look at new properties?

  Quentin West (20:21)
  Yes, so for a purchase property, if we’re going to buy something, at this point, it’s got to be something unique. ⁓ I think there’s, you know, a lot of, I don’t want to say saturation, but there’s a lot of competition ⁓ for average level properties. So anything typically under 750,000 or less, ⁓ there’s just a much lower buried entry to get into those types of properties. ⁓

  And so you’re going to have a ton of competition and especially if you buy an apartment, a lot of times it’s just a race to get to the bottom. Who can have the cheapest price? And so for buying anything, I think it’s important to look at million dollar plus properties, having a 15 to 20,000 or higher design budget so that you can create an experience more than anything. And so first off, if you don’t have a budget like that,

  probably not the greatest idea to buy. Again, co-hosting is probably the best opportunity right now. ⁓ And then when you do buy or set up a property in general, ⁓ we use the golden triangle method. ⁓ What that is, is we look for a place ⁓ that is 30 minutes away from three different major hotspots.

  So those could be like major attractions like a national park, an amusement park, major airport, something that has tons of traffic year round. ⁓ And we found that by looking for places inside that triangle, ⁓ there’s never a shortage of travelers. You’ve got people traveling back and forth or coming to stay to visit any of those areas. ⁓ And it’s not as seasonal as, you know, a beach market or

  ⁓ you know middle of the mountains or something like that ⁓ yeah

  Michelle Kesil (22:20)
  Yeah, absolutely, that makes sense. Thank you for sharing that. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, stay updated with everything that you’re doing, where is the best place for people to connect with you?

  Quentin West (22:23)
  Yeah.

  Yes, if you follow me on Instagram at QDealsHolmes or you can text SUPERHOST to 26786 and get access to our free course.

  Michelle Kesil (22:49)
  Amazing, thank you for sharing that.

  Quentin West (22:51)
  Yeah, absolutely.

  Michelle Kesil (22:53)
  Well, I appreciate your time and your perspective. Thank you for being here.

  Quentin West (22:58)
  Thanks lot for having me.

  Michelle Kesil (22:59)
  Of course. And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Quinton who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on the next episode.