Streamline Your Vacation Rental Turnover Process with Turno: An Interview with the Founder, Assaf Karmon

1:43

Welcome to Alex and Annie the real women of vacation rentals.

Assaf Karmon: 2:31

Oh, ladies, thank you for having me on the show. I'm really excited to be here.

Annie Holcombe: 2:35

We're thrilled to have you and we talked off camera, but we're gonna go through it on the show today, your product is just amazing. And so we've been really excited to have you on. We're excited that you've come on as a I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we're joined today with Assaf sponsor, we're excited to tell your story. So I think the way we want to get started is why don't you tell us a little bit about you your journey and how you came to create turno.

Assaf Karmon: 2:54

Yeah, so a couple years ago, maybe seven or eight years ago, I was posting on Airbnb kind of small time, I was having a really hard time staying organized and staying on top of, you know, who is going to come to clean when they're going to come to clean, you know, just communicating with with the cleaners and making sure they do a good job and got really stressed doing that, you know, I got into your hosting, thinking this was going to be a nice passive income. You know, I'll just be like looking at my bank account and seeing all that money flowing in. But you know, the reality was that it was a lot more work than I'd imagined and particularly know the backside of the house, which is managing of turnovers, making sure everything is clean and ready. And you know, the timing of it was just really stressing me out. So my professional Karmon who is the CEO and founder of Turno. Assaf, So good training, I'm a software engineer, I saw this great opportunity to, you know, build some technology to streamline that part of my business and just make it really easy for myself. So, got to work, building a nice app and make it all work together initially just tackling the scheduling piece, but then realized that really a harder part of the problem is really finding people who know what they're doing, which was really difficult. So then we added the marketplace component to the turnout app to help you find cleaners. And you know, initially it was just where I lived in Hawaii, but now it's a worldwide. You can find cleaners everywhere where their Airbnb ease is incredible.

Alex Husner: 4:30

I mean, it's such a needed service I was describing to somebody the other day, it's almost like Uber of cleaning, right? You're connecting the two sides of the business there. And that's probably the number one thing that we hear when we go in these different markets. There's just that workforce is really to see you today. hard and it's it's hard to coordinate. It's hard to find the workers and then to be able to actually do this and there's some people make it a semi passive business but for others that really want to excel and create a great guest experience. It's such an important part of the process.

Assaf Karmon: 5:00

Yeah, you know what I like it when people say Uber of cleaning, but with one distinction, we make sure that you have the same cleaner every time. So there isn't this issue

Annie Holcombe: 5:22

The one thing that I find is fascinating. So having been in property management and myself, is the of just having to train new people all the time. It's just hiring and training of staff is really challenging. It's the HR process, and the vetting of a cleaner, when you started out, did you have any sense of what that would entail? And how you one person or two people that you continuously work with, and would go about it? And, and I would imagine that you have to set up different kind of standards or processes in different states, because there's going to be different they know your property, you know what to do. And that laws. Am I correct? I might be wrong on that. Yeah. So you know, when it comes to engaging someone for cleaning a vacation knowledge is retained. rental, so what you really want to know, is, are they aware of the timeliness by like, how important it is to be on time, and what the consequences are for like, you know, not showing up, yeah, being late. And you also want to know that they've done this before. So you know, the beautiful thing in Toronto is that you can see the reviews that other hosts gave that cleaner, right? Because, you know, cleaners in our platform, they serve multiple hosts, and you can see the reviews that those posts left for them. And if you know that, then you can work with them with confidence, knowing that they know what they're doing that other people would similar businesses to yours, or you get experience with them.

Assaf Karmon: 6:46

And then, you know, on our end, we collect background checks against every cleaner on our platform, they submit references from other hosts, that we check, we make sure that you're dealing with people who know what they're doing, and are also held accountable by our review system. Yeah, I think the accountability part is that's huge for this. And also, we were talking a couple of weeks ago with some of your staff. And they said that the way that it works, when the host is able to actually put in photos of how everything it should be in the home, right, so that they have a playbook of what they're supposed to go by. And I mean, that just makes it so much better from an accountability standpoint. Oh, yeah, yeah. So the beauty of it is that, you know, we built this software platform that you can create checklists that are very detailed. And you can go room by room, this is what you need to do. And you can say, oh, for this checklist item, actually, please take a photo so that I know that it was done and that I have evidence, in case there are issues with the guests. You know, unfortunately, some guests are like difficult and you know, early refunds and discounts and they'll say, oh, this wasn't clean, or I didn't have this or that or this wasn't like the listing like they've, they've learned to game the system. So what really helps to deal with that is just having time stamped photos. Yeah, you know, once you get that one refund request, like, then you'll be like, Okay, I'm going to move forward. These things so that, you know, you can go into Resolution Center and be like, Okay, this, this is actually not true, you can create these custom checklists, you can also create inventory lists. So you know, ask a cleaner, basically, to let you know if any, you know, consumables are missing towels or missing batteries, whatever it is, you provide your guests that you can track. And then we have an automatic payment system. So whenever they're done cleaning, they'll get paid automatically. So there's no need to invoice, there's no need to actually have don't belong there. We're there, all that stuff. So it all just happens very, very seamlessly. And what I'd like to say is, we want people to operate by exception, meaning like, just create your script, create your playbook things will happen based on your playbook. And if there's an exception, you're notified, and then you can step in, and hope as you are getting more and more experienced, and you creating a more elaborate checklists, and more detailed operations, then the exceptions are going to be fewer and fewer. And then you can really arrive at, you know, this state of passive income.

Alex Husner: 9:28

from a technology standpoint, tell us a little bit about that. I know you're connected to just about all the software's that are out there. But that's gotta have been probably the biggest part of building the business has just been getting all those connections in place. Ya know, it's very important that we're connected to everyone in the industry so that things are really seamless because this is what we really is about operating your business seamlessly and arriving at that state of passive so we're connected through partnerships with Airbnb with all your property management system.

Assaf Karmon: 10:00

which means that you know, once you click that button in our system that connects you to Airbnb or your property management system, then we can see when the guests are there. And then we can create the cleaning projects. And we can dispatch them to your cleaners, and you don't have to do anything. So when someone books, your place, clean projects are created, they're assigned to cleaners, and then you only have to do something in case you know, mayor's can't make it or something like that. So very important to have connectivity and for things to work seamlessly with all the other tools that you're working with. Oh, yeah, we're really proud of this partnership with Airbnb that also now allows you to see the cleaning reviews that the guests leave against your failures. So if your guests left a poor clean review, we can tie that back to whoever cleaned before that guests arrive. Okay, good point, you know, you have 20 properties. It's hard to keep track of like the reviews, and then who was cleaning and which properties will make it really easy to see how the guests evaluate your cleaners.

Annie Holcombe: 11:10

I think that's that's an excellent, excellent part of it. Because I think a lot of times, you think forward, like, what was the clean going to be after this day, but you're not thinking about what is it going to look like for the next guests coming in? So I don't think that cleaners generally get that kind of feedback. So that's probably a good thing. When you set up a new market, or you go into a new market. So you started it in Hawaii, where you are you obviously, you know, went into other markets, how long does it take you to get enough cleaners in a market? And I guess, how do you assess what that looks like? Do you just need one person that needs, you know, one operator, one unit that needs a cleaner? Where you say, we're in this market? Or do you just generally try to source as many markets as you can? What does that look like?

Assaf Karmon: 11:51

As things are right now we have cleaners in every market in the US? Wow, our coverage is somewhat lesser in Europe and other parts of the world. But we're, you know, we're getting there. But ya know, early on, you know, let's see, let's see search for clearance somewhere where we didn't have cleaners and you just didn't find them. Yeah. But down, that's not the case. I don't know if you guys remember. But you know, 10 years ago, they didn't have like Uber in every city. Imagine right? Now he's there. So luckily, you know, this infrastructure of a clear network is available everywhere in the US. And I'm seeing this more and more now. People that are operating short term rentals, completely remote, right. So you know, you live in North Carolina, and you have a unit there, you have a unit in Panama City, maybe another one in Maui, and you're operating it remotely. But you have kind of your boots on the ground through Turnham. I think that's where I'm in the reviews and actually being able to pick the right cleaner for your property and probably building I mean, you're building a relationship with that cleaner, right? I mean, that person is they are your boots on the ground, they are the first line of defense, they probably pick up when there's maintenance issues as well. I mean, they're seeing things that the owner if they don't live in that area, certainly that they're they're not seeing so the value and making sure that you have somebody that you can trust, like this is so important if you're remote. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, we built the platform in a very flexible way. So that not only can you find people on our marketplace, you can also bring your own people. So you can mix and match cleaners from our marketplace and people that you already work with, you know, your cousin, your nephew, look, cleaner, that you've had a previous relationship with your maintenance person, your lawn care person, they can all work return us you can mix them in, and you can, you know, augment your existing team with our marketplace.

Annie Holcombe: 13:50

Notice that you had 55,000 Is that correct? 35,000 vetted cleaners through your platform, which I just, I don't know, I know, that's not a big number when you in terms of like, how many vacation rentals there are out there, but 55,000 is a lot of cleaners to have in your system to go through. Yeah,

Assaf Karmon: 14:09

there's a lot of cleaners and you know, it's worldwide. You know, we have like, hundreds of cleaners a day that we process.

Alex Husner: 14:18

How do you find that? What does that look like from an acquisition standpoint of getting the cleaners actually onto the platform?

Assaf Karmon: 14:23

So it was initially it was you know, as hard but now it's really kind of taken a lot of its own and, you know, for cleaners, it's really a no brainer, there's no risk on their end, they sign up, they do their background check, they provide the references, if they find work, good. If they don't then you know, maybe they've wasted a little bit of time, but we don't charge them for access. There's really no risk for them and you know, the word travels and we're happy that they trust us and you know for us they are customers in the same way that the hosts is, you know, we are here to help them build business This is and you know, the most beautiful moment for us is when we meet someone who's like, Hey, I've been using turnout for three years, two years, one year, and I've been able to build an independent business, I now have hired people and have created financial independence for myself and for my family. It's just that's so rewarding to hear that Oh, absolutely, yeah. And to have that fulfillment from what you're doing, that you're enabling many people to host to be able to run their businesses, but also the cleaners to be able to find work and have, you know, good livelihood doing this as well. It's great, it's hard work that people who are successful on turnout have a couple of qualities. One, they're reliable, they're consistent, they're honest, they play by the rules. And if they do all of that, then they just bubble up through our review system. And they're able to get more customers and more customers and then hire their own people. And it's hard work, but it's rewarding. And people can really be successful.

Alex Husner: 16:02

One thing that we see a lot with a lot of the property management software's that are out there, a lot of them don't have really good cleaning maintenance within the platform. And so they use external tools to be able to do a lot of things. This turnover essentially is, I mean, it replaces the need to do that, and a lot of or to have an external tool, because this is actually getting the people and then being able to house the process. So I think that's, that's a unique part of it also that, you know, obviously, it's a very slick mobile app, something that's easy for everybody to use within the field, a lot of the legacy property management, software's do not have anything that's slick as far as apps like that. So from a usability standpoint, I think that probably helps quite a bit as well.

Assaf Karmon: 16:48

So we're actually connected with all the PMs, as you know, with the exception of a few that are very small, that you can connect her to your PMS, and then enjoy using our mobile app in conjunction with European mess, we make it possible for you to either work with us alone, or through your PMS.

Alex Husner: 17:07

That's great. What what happens. So say a cleaner is out of property. And they noticed that there was something wrong from a maintenance perspective, what did they do at that point? Did they obviously they let their the host or boss know, but if a maintenance person that they use is also within here? Can they create work orders within the system?

Assaf Karmon: 17:23

Absolutely. So we have a, we call it a problem reporting feature. So they have a button in their mobile app that says report a problem, for example, you know, broken door, you know, some guests or wild broken bed, you know, I don't know why either we're jumping on the bed all night, but you can record a problem. And then the host gets a notification, hey, there's a problem broken bed in this property. And then you can forward that problem to your maintenance person, and then they can go and fix it, you know, cleaners, probably not gonna be able to fix your bed. So that needs to be escalated to, you know, handyman or to hosts themselves. So yeah, it's really kind of tightly integrated. This is part of operating this business. And like I said, managing by exception, this is the exception, that this is really when you need to step in, you really shouldn't be scheduling, cleaning, because that's automated, you shouldn't be like paying invoices, because that's automated. You shouldn't be asking for pictures, because that's automated. So only if there's a problem you should really be stepping in.

Alex Husner: 18:37

So the funny thing is, and he always talks about this, you probably know where to go. We get a lot of people that we talked to that they are under that they come into short term rentals, thinking that is passive income, right? Probably like how you did, but they realize how difficult it actually is. But this app actually surely makes sense that passive income, which I don't think that we've talked to any other supplier that actually does solve a lot of that, that it makes it possible, which is really cool. Because, you know, from our standpoint, being the business for so long, we know when you're running, you know, large scale companies, there's a lot to it, but and cleaning is a big part of it. But this really simplifies things for the smaller size manager, what would you say is the typical client? That's a host as it did they have one property? 510? Do you have any numbers on that?

Assaf Karmon: 19:24

Yes. So we serve people with one property. And we also serve companies with 1000 properties. Really? Wow. So it really runs the gamut. And we try to build tools for people that have 1000 properties. Yeah. Wow. For and the origin is really supporting the little guy.

Annie Holcombe: 19:45

Well, the scalability was never like it was just like the the technology was always being built for the larger people. So the smaller guys had to do everything sort of scrappy, and that's where I think a lot of really great innovations for our industry has come about or people like yourself who started out, and the enterprise software was just too expensive, too much, it was way more than you thought you needed with a couple of units. And so it's that find a need fill a need situation where you know, a lot of these technology people like yourself, were in the business and use your brain power for good, you know, and created something amazing for the industry. So thank you for doing this. This is really, really great.

Alex Husner: 20:23

At one point, the name used to be turnover B and B. And we were curious to hear the story on that, I think, was it sometime last spring that you rebranded to turno

Assaf Karmon: 20:32

so after too many times that I have misspelled my own company. When we when we started, we, you know, we couldn't afford a five letter domain with the, you know, for the $8 domain at the time. I think that name served us well initially turned over BNB. But you know, we want to do things that are more that are bigger over Bnbs, because just a very descriptive, which is great, but also doesn't really leave room for doing other things. So we're starting to do more maintenance stuff, perhaps in the future, we'll do things outside of the vacation rental space. So turn out, well, being a very short, succinct name really great. turner.com, I think serves us well, as you know, doesn't constrain our origination of the things that we want to do and can do.

Alex Husner: 21:27

Yeah, I agree with that completely. I remember when I heard about the rebranding, I was like, yep, that makes perfect sense. I think you've got a big runway for growth with that name to do a lot of different things. But tell us a little bit about the actual company about your staff, I mean, your your corporate level staff of how you've built this, like, tell us about the journey of actually putting it together the team and making it a reality. Yeah.

Unknown: 21:51

It really is, you know, one step at a time, like when I when I started the company, I didn't think I didn't have like a, you know, an eight year plan of how we're going to get to where we are to very high, it was kind of one step at a time, and one opportunity at a time. And for the first year, it was just me and my business partner, Tim, we our co founders went to business school together at the time and started the company together. So it was really couldn't have done this without him. And I don't know, if he could have done this without me. And

Alex Husner: 22:23

I'm sure he'd say the same.

Assaf Karmon: 22:24

It's, you know, I think it's really great to have someone to run with you to work together and be with each other and keep each other accountable and encourage one another and provide a sounding board. So this has been instrumental to be able to have someone to run with, I was in charge of kind of the technical side of it. And he's in charge more of the operation side of it, you know, and we both kind of have like a mutual vision for the product was just the two of us, initially, and then we hired one person and one more person. And as we had more traction and more funds, we like Coke, and really use another developer and other customer service person. Because initially, we were everything. Like if you had a problem, you would go to the chat, and you talk to me. You say, Oh, I have a problem, you know, this page is not loading is like, Oh, hold on a second, let me fix it. You're chatting, you had an encounter found was like, okay, hold on a second, I would go log into the bank and check in one man's know, or two minutes, you know, but you know, that doesn't scale. Obviously, you find yourself in more customers. Yeah, like you can't provide customer service and develop the product. And customer service person. Let's hire more developers. And now we are about 150 people in the business. And it's great because we know we keep knowing delegate, you know, more and more of the day to day stuff so that we can focus more on the you know, the vision, and then also giving people direction and, and also managing by exception, right. You step in and you solve it and you run a business yourself. So you know, there's never a shortage of problems to solve.

Annie Holcombe: 24:09

Yeah, opportunities, opportunities, opportunities, opportunities, if you're in the US, and you said you're in international, like, how many countries are you in now?

Assaf Karmon: 24:18

All right. So the product is used in probably every country, every country, but you know, every country, every country where you can Yeah, we you know, provide localization for the app, meaning that you can, you know, use it in the interfaces is translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French. And I don't know if maybe there's another one I'm missing. But we might see that support for a couple more languages soon. But then people use the English version, probably in other places where we're not localized.

Alex Husner: 24:59

Yeah, that's a big part of it too. I know a lot of the apps that I've seen, they might have Spanish, but most don't. And obviously, that's a problem. And if people aren't going to use the apps, the cleaners or the personnel if they must speak the language, flex right off the bat. But that's, that's interesting.

Assaf Karmon: 25:17

The nice thing is you can have your app in English. And then if if your cleaner speaks another language, then they can use another language. Maybe at some point, we will provide kind of live translation because we have a chat feature, you can chat with your cleaner. But currently, the the chat content itself isn't translated. But maybe at some point, we can add a feature where it, you know, they can type in another language, and you could read it in your language. Well, if you're bored, I mean, if you've got nothing going on, since you're not handling service calls or anything with the app, you could do that.

Annie Holcombe: 25:54

Well, we'll interview in six months, and it'll be a challenge for you.

Alex Husner: 26:00

So here's the question, a lot of areas now have made it so that you have to have local boots on the ground, somebody that can get to the property within an hour as part of regulations. does this solve that for people? Sure. That right, there is a huge thing that I mean, you're actually I don't know if you get involved much in advocacy, but I feel like what turno is doing is also helping on that front as well.

Assaf Karmon: 26:22

Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know about every specific bylaw in every location.

Annie Holcombe: 26:27

Yeah, they just implemented in a county that I live in, where they had to have like a number posted where somebody could reach somebody, and they could get, they could get somebody within 24 hours to like, well, 24 hours a day, they could reach somebody. So I think that tip for those operators that again, aren't living in the market, you know, you don't want to call when you're in Ohio, and you can't be there. You know, you can't book a flight just on a whim like that. So I think that definitely is something that you could embed in the service or, you know, talk to the cleaners about being that person, that content person, it's

Assaf Karmon: 26:59

definitely something to look into. But I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do it.

Alex Husner: 27:03

Yeah, I think it's actually any I was just talking to somebody in 38 yesterday about that ordinance in your area, I think it's within an hour that they have to be there. But one topic that has come up recently that we're kind of diving into is the rise in CO hosts, and through professional management companies, the legacy companies that it's not really talked about a lot. And you know how the ability to do that now is kind of a threat to some of these companies that is coast are coming in and able to offer less of a commission, but be able to service the properties and like it or hate it. It's the reality of things, right? I mean, this the technology that's come out as just opened up a world of opportunities, our businesses ever changing. Yeah, it really it is, you know, there's so much great tech that's coming out. And I feel like things have changed, obviously, significantly in the industry since when you started six years ago. So it's six years ago, probably feels like forever ago to you guys. What was next for turnout, you mentioned that the brand has obviously more opportunities, because of the name now and you could do different things. Is there anything you can can share for things that might be on the roadmap for 2024?

Assaf Karmon: 28:10

Yeah, I think we want to help us really be remote and passive, as much as we can. So kind of adding more service providers with different kinds of services, you know, outside cleaning, so that you can really just find everything you need in one place and have it all automatically scheduled in a seamless way.

Alex Husner: 28:31

That's great. Well, Assaf , it has been a pleasure chatting with you today and learning more about turnout, we're again, so grateful and excited to have you as a sponsor for the podcast, and just excited to talk to some more of your clients that use the service we've got, we spoke earlier about getting some of your hosts to come on and, and share their experience and just get to tell the true story of it's always good to hear from the people that truly use it. And obviously, you're the super user because you created it. But it's fun to tell the stories of the people that this is actually making their lives so much easier. And we're really looking forward to that.

Assaf Karmon: 29:04

Absolutely. So we've made a special offer to your listeners. Yes, you can you share with them.

Alex Husner: 29:13

Yeah, absolutely. So for listeners of the podcast, if you go to toronto.com/offer/alexandAnnie podcast, and we'll put that in the show notes and then the links, you can get $150 amazon gift card just for signing up. So you can go and check it out. Great way to get 150 bucks on up and complete your first project. Yeah, they do have to have one project. Yes, yes. Right. That's right. Yeah. It's still it's a no brainer. It's $150 to spend on Amazon and who isn't doing that right now. Right? Yeah.

Annie Holcombe: 29:44

Assaf what's the best way for people to get in touch with you if they're interested in reaching out learning more when you go to turn on.com. We said five letter domain really. We have a chat function like a you know, kind of on the bottom of the website where we

Assaf Karmon: 30:00

Have 24/7 customer service that you know humans by the way, not AI. Yeah, there we go. That's the American multiple languages and they'll be happy to help you with anything great.

Alex Husner: 30:12

Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Andy and now you can go to Alex and Danny podcast.com. And thank you so much for chatting with us off. We will continue to track your journey this year. And just excited to share more stories about Toronto and the success that you've had for hosts all across the world. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here today. Absolutely. Thank you for tuning in everybody. See you next time.