How to Build a Top 1% Airbnb Business With Premium Short-Term Rental Management

William Lenoir (00:00)
We’re really looking to expand in St. Simons Island, coastal Georgia region. We expect to be here a good five years at least. And so we would like to, one, invest in the area with our own income, but also find other like-minded property owners that are looking for premier management of the rentals. And, one, to tie back to our properties in Texas and say, hey, look, like, we’ve set up some really excellent systems. We’re in the top 1% of Airbnbs out in West Texas. The goal is to be in the top 1% of Airbnbs out in Austin, Texas. Like, that’s the main thing for me.

Meghan Escobar (02:10)
Welcome back to another episode of Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Meghan Escobar. And one of my favorite things about being a host in this show is to be able to sit down with incredible entrepreneurs and really just be able to learn more about their business, the business that they’ve built, and the person behind it. Because every business has a story. Every entrepreneur has turning points that shaped how they think, how they lead, and where they’re gonna scale next.

So today we’re gonna dive into exactly that. Excited to introduce Will Lenoir to the show today. Thank you so much for being here. I always like to start out super simple. For somebody meeting you for the first time, who are you and what do you do?

William Lenoir (02:56)
Hey, I’m Will Lenoir. I am a property manager for short-term rentals out in West Texas, Central Texas, and hopefully soon the Golden Isles in Georgia. I’ve got two kids, three and five. They run myself and my wife ragged, but we manage through having two W-2 incomes and are entrepreneurs as well. So we’re hoping to show our kids what it means to build things, build a business, and build a family-friendly business as well.

Meghan Escobar (03:30)
I love that. So building little entrepreneurs as well. And at KWR Management, what do you guys focus on?

William Lenoir (03:39)
We’re focused on premier Airbnbs, premier short-term rentals. Ideally, anything over $100,000 a year in bookings is what we’re looking to take on as a future client. We have some premier micro-resorts out in West Texas, Central Texas, that we currently manage, and looking to expand that into the Golden Isles network as well.

Meghan Escobar (04:00)
Nice. And how did you get into this industry?

William Lenoir (04:04)
It was actually back when I was active-duty Air Force. In 2017, I bought my first house. I transitioned from renting to owning. And I was looking for roommates, couldn’t find any roommates. I was also TDY a lot. So I was gone two weeks out of every month practically, doing training and testing. So during that time, I looked into Airbnb as somewhere to pull in more income and try to make use of my house while I was gone. And that’s really how I got into it, was renting out rooms to people. And I actually enjoyed it a lot. I was making some awesome margaritas for people that were staying there when I was there. And people were excited to have the whole house to themselves when I wasn’t there. So it was really a great experience. But yeah, started in 2017 and then kept on growing.

Meghan Escobar (04:54)
That’s incredible. And now you’re growing beyond outside of the market area of what you originally started, which was in Texas, and now looking to grow into the Georgia area.

William Lenoir (05:57)
Correct. Yeah. We’ve moved. Texas is so large, you know, Big Bend National Park is six hours away from where the state capitol is. So for a lot of people, that’s kind of hard to imagine. Moving from Central Texas out to Georgia, it felt like a big deal, but honestly, it was about—we spent just as much time in Texas as we did in the rest of the states getting out here.

So managing a property in West Texas while we’re in Central Texas is about how it feels right now managing a Central Texas property.

Meghan Escobar (06:30)
Hmm. Love that. And, you know, one thing that caught my attention was when I asked you what your biggest challenge was. You mentioned being able to let go of, you know, having remote people managing your properties and, you know, making sure that everything is okay without your hands being directly in the pot.

I think a lot of people who are owners and operators struggle with that, right? When you build something from scratch, right, you wanna be able to have all hands in. So I know that’s not an easy thing to do. Talk to us about what’s been helping you keep that machine running smoothly.

William Lenoir (07:16)
Yeah, it goes back to trust. If you have somebody that you really trust watching over your property, you feel a lot better about it. You can sleep a lot better at night. So for me, when I take over somebody’s property, I want them to know that I’m going to treat it the way that they would treat it. I want them to know that we are going to do everything we can to take excellent care of the property that they’re letting us watch for them.

And so I have a great team out in West Texas that’s been doing the job now for two years. They’ve been excellent. We broke the record in July for bookings this year. So we are off and running out there. The team in Central Texas out in Toledo, they’re just getting started. We just had our first group leave, and it’s a same-day turnover. So it’s kind of a trial by fire. So I was on the phone with them all morning trying to make sure everything was moving smoothly.

Just had some blinds fixed, but we’re good to go. So it’s been fun building that team. But yeah, I have personally had struggles with letting go of some of that management. But I’m confident in the people that I’ve surrounded myself with, that they are people of high character, that they will get the job done and take good care of our property while we’re gone.

Meghan Escobar (08:34)
Love that. And how long have you guys been buying the short-term rentals?

William Lenoir (08:42)
We’ve been operating the West Texas property since 2022. My wife, I told you, was a women’s basketball coach. So at that time, she took a job in Hawaii. So we really had to just take a chance and trust somebody to watch our property. So we moved from West Texas, middle of the desert, out to Oahu, Hawaii. That was a huge change. And that was—

Meghan Escobar (09:04)
Yeah.

William Lenoir (09:09)
That was interesting to do, to see. It was about—like, it was as a long-term rental at first and then grew. And then when we moved back to Texas, we took back the management just because we really wanted to grow that property to be something special. We wanted it to be somewhere that people wanted to come for generations, that we had a lot of repeat business, that people would come out there and not want to leave the property and just stay on the property and relax and enjoy it.

So there’s a lot of attractions out there in Big Bend National Park, but a lot of them are really spread out. You can be in Alpine and still be an hour away from the front gate of Big Bend National Park.

Meghan Escobar (09:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s huge.

William Lenoir (09:53)
Yeah. So when people come out there, they have a lot of things on the itinerary, but somehow they end up staying at our property, just hanging out.

Meghan Escobar (10:35)
Well, that’s a good feeling. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, Will, every operator I know has a moment, you know, as an entrepreneur where things got real. That could be, you know, a deal going bad or sideways or a time that you failed, you just had to pivot really fast. Would you mind sharing one of those moments?

William Lenoir (10:55)
Had a good one in November. We had a group that was staying out there for Thanksgiving, and they were there for a week, and they were paying top dollar, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. And we had one of our neighbors let us know that they were shooting guns on our property and hunting our quail without permission and definitely against the rules of the Airbnb. So that was a pretty big shock. I’m coming in as somebody who’s been in very intense situations in the military, been on airplanes, I’ve jumped out of airplanes, I’ve seen a lot of things that get your adrenaline running. So this was not something—

Meghan Escobar (11:48)
Right. Thank you for your service, by the way.

William Lenoir (11:51)
But yeah, I come at things pretty even-keeled. And so when they let me know that that was going on, I was pretty livid, but I also wanted to make sure that, hey, this is a group that they’ve decided to pick our place to spend a family vacation. I don’t want to come in and just barrel them over and kick them out. So I politely asked them to stop, let them know that was against the rules, and they said they stopped.

Meghan Escobar (12:09)
Yeah.

William Lenoir (12:19)
And then we had some more issues after that as well. So it was really disappointing to see. That was kind of our first real bad experience with a specific guest who was communicating back and forth and being very honest and forthcoming. But after they left and our property manager got in there, we found a lot more damage. We found out a lot more about the situation. We didn’t realize that they were shooting at another house. So that was, yeah, that was not a good situation. But yeah, I ended up reporting that to Airbnb. Airbnb handled it pretty well. I was pretty shocked, but they ended up kicking that person off of Airbnb for good. So yeah, that was good. And yeah, we were able to also use the insurance to replace any damaged items.

Meghan Escobar (13:07)
Well, rightfully so.

William Lenoir (13:16)
Yeah. Hey, those things happen, you know. It just comes with the territory. I keep telling my wife that the—

Meghan Escobar (13:21)
Yeah.

Unfortunately, they do. And that is really the stuff that you don’t see and what people don’t talk about enough, right? You know, we live in a highlight society, is what I call it. You know, everybody highlights the goods of success and, you know, never what it takes to bear the fruit of the labor, right? Right. And to be honest, Will, I truly believe that’s what separates folks who are able to navigate through these situations and keep going forward versus the ones who, you know, are here to just kind of dabble in one bad scenario, and they’re calling it quits and throwing the flag in. So yeah. I know we talked a little bit about you scaling to, you know, moving and grabbing some properties there in Georgia. Talked about how you went from six to two.

Where are you more focused on scaling to next? Like, what’s the next real big goal for you and KWR?

William Lenoir (14:28)
Yeah, we’re really looking to expand in St. Simons Island, coastal Georgia region. We expect to be here a good five years at least. And so we would like to, one, invest in the area with our own income, but also find other like-minded property owners that are looking for premier management of the rentals. And, one, to tie back to our properties in Texas and say, hey, look, like, we’ve set up some really excellent systems. We’re in the top 1% of Airbnbs out in West Texas. The goal is to be in the top 1% of Airbnbs out in Austin, Texas. Like, that’s the main thing for me, is that we keep charging on that path of excellence and can bring on board people and like-minded individuals that are looking to excel at short-term rental management.

Meghan Escobar (15:59)
Love that. And I know a lot of folks that listen in are, you know, typically early in their journey, just getting their feet wet in the industry, whether they’re becoming an agent or an investor or whatever the case may be, they’re fairly new. And then we have our vets who have been in the game a while and really just looking to level up and find the next best thing. And I think they would benefit from hearing this. Like, when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

William Lenoir (16:35)
You know, we talked a little bit about it before. For me, I’m a boutique management property manager. And so I manage properties that are very premier. I said that before, but I’m trying not to come to people and tell them that I’m gonna take care of the property the same as the—like, I’m not looking for Motel 6s. I’m looking for people that are there to take care of a resort. I’m there for people that are looking to bring in top talent. I’m looking for people that have integrity. So if you can find a property manager that has integrity, that is going to treat your property better than you would treat it, then you’re going to feel a lot better about being in business with them than if you took on somebody who is just trying to pay the bills, somebody who’s just trying to gather more properties, and more properties are better. For me, that just—I look at that as dilution. I don’t want to dilute. I want to have very high-quality properties. I want to have very high-quality people in my network and in my staff.

Meghan Escobar (17:48)
Yeah. And I think that’s really important for people to hear, is even creating the relationships within the organization, right? Make sure there’s trust built. Make sure that they care about the business as much as you do. But even for you talking about outside of that, like, even taking the business to the next level, being able to scale it, being able to, you know—how important is it to you and Katie to create external relationships?

William Lenoir (18:21)
Very important. We’ve taken the mindset of the same saying as far as, like, you are the same people you surround yourself—the five people you surround yourself with is who you’re gonna be the aggregate of. And so we seek out people that have proven track records for doing some incredible things. I mentioned our friends out in West Texas, that they were building hotels for 20 years and building pools for millionaires for 20 years. And they are really awesome people. You know, they’re retired. They fly around in their planes and travel all the time, but they’re really, really great people that we trust, that we admire, that we take their advice of. And they’re out there watching our property for us. And we just are so grateful to have them. We’re looking for people similar to that. We’re looking for people that we can aspire to be like, but also that know that we’re trustworthy and we trust them.

It all comes down to trust. It’s never—you can’t put a dollar figure—

Meghan Escobar (19:23)
Yeah. And it’s also something that you can’t fake.

William Lenoir (19:27)
Can’t fake it. No. Yeah. So it’s—and then that’s it, like I said before, you know, I’m not trying to mass-market our business. I’m not trying to blast out emails and text messages, just trying to get people to click on a link. I’m coming to you, I’m shaking your hand, I’m looking in your eye and telling you that I’m gonna take good care of your property.

Meghan Escobar (19:45)
I love that. And before we wrap up here, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn, you know, maybe how you got started with Airbnb or maybe collab, I mean, what would be the best way for someone to reach you? Is it phone, email, socials?

William Lenoir (20:06)
Yeah, you can check us out on our social media. We’ve got over 10,000 followers at our K&W Ranchita. So @kandwranchita is that handle on Instagram. We have a website, KWR Stays. We’re looking to start expanding that website so that it’s not just West Texas-focused, but it’s gonna be Golden Isles and Central Texas as well. So KWR Stays, you can find our contact info there.

And then email [email protected].

Meghan Escobar (20:40)
And the handle is that K and—is it “and” spelled out? A-N-D?

William Lenoir (20:49)
We’re not a big operation, we’re a little operation. We’re just a little ranchita.

Meghan Escobar (20:54)
Little mom-and-pop. Mm-hmm. Love that. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, and more importantly, your perspective. We definitely need more people in this space who are doing the right thing. And I can’t thank you enough for being here and just speaking from experience, speaking from the heart, you can tell. You know, like you said in the beginning, you’re a very relationship-driven, high-quality type of person, and that’s who you want to surround yourself with. So I appreciate you for being here and sharing your story.

For those of you who are tuning in, if you did gain any value from this, please make sure you subscribe. And we’ve got more conversations with owners and operators, just like Will here, who are out here building real businesses in real time with real people. See you on the next episode.