The potential of the gig economy is huge. The opportunity to bring in extra cash to supplement, or supplant, your regular income has become massively popular over the last 15 years and only grew bigger during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it seemed almost everyone was looking to make bank on a side hustle or personal passion project.
The trend of renting out your time, skills, or home has become so lucrative that many entrepreneurs have quit their day jobs and transformed the side gig into a vocation and their main revenue stream.
However, the last year has seen the media awash with stories of a downturn in the gig market, with Airbnb hosts, in particular, being hit by stormy conditions that have had a huge impact on their profits.
Ongoing, Long-Term Success
Sean Rakidzich is a premier thought leader of the short-term rental economy, who also serves as the host of a titular YouTube Channel (formerly called Airbnb Automated). He has, most recently, been creating content to help fellow Airbnb-ers through this period of uncertainty.
Making use of his personal experience on the short-term rental platform, Rakidzich is the ideal influencer to advise his contemporaries on how to survive the Airbnb recession, and alterations in algorithms, and create strategies for ongoing, long-term success.
For nearly a decade, Rakidzich has been at the forefront of the Airbnb and short-term rental entrepreneur space, building a portfolio of 155 properties in eight different cities in the U.S., while making more than $10 million in revenue along the way. In fact, he is so successful that he took off all of 2021 after fully automating his STR (short-term rental) business.
Open and Honest
Yet it is not just his remarkable success that makes Rakidzich so impressive as an influencer in the STR space; it is his refreshing openness and honesty about his problems, both personal and in business.
To say that Rakidzich’s formative years were problematic is an understatement. Both his mother and father were abusive alcoholics who were often violent toward their son. To make matters worse, his parents divorced when he was just eight years old. A decade later, when his mother lost custody of her children to the state because of abuse, his younger brother was placed with a foster family, separating the close siblings and causing trauma to the future entrepreneur.
Addressing these issues and his long struggle with undiagnosed ADHD, one video on his YouTube channel explores the difficulties he faced in childhood, how they affected his character, and why they have actually been a positive force in his life.
But he’s always had a knack for making money and taking care of himself.
“Immediately after I graduated from high school, I was selling newspaper subscriptions,” explained Rakidzich. “And my ability to read people’s mannerisms, their tone of voice, and the ability to use my own reassuring facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice to influence them into a sense of comfort — the type of soft skills that aren’t easily trained — came from my need to survive as a kid.”
The video goes on to describe how viewers can use their own “underdog stories” to their advantage and make it, and as Rakidzich says, “A catalyst to writing your own playbook to become rich, famous, and happy.”
AirbnBust
More recent videos feature Rakidzich’s forthright approach to examining the Airbnb recession.
Across the world, Airbnb hosts, supported by market data, have reported a stark drop in occupancy. This shortfall has been attributed to several different factors, including a surge in the number of properties, an increase in prices across the board, and a slowdown in bookings following the bounceback after lockdown when people were desperate to travel.
With his customary honesty, Rakidzich discusses the lull in STR bookings and how to ride it out. This content doesn’t hold back. Videos with titles such as, ‘Airbnbust: How I’m Fighting Back,’ ‘Your Failing Business. It’s Your Fault,’ and ‘You Deserve to Fail,’ all offer a no-holds-barred view of the current climate and explain how hosts can boost their bookings by making their properties more attractive in an overpriced and saturated market.
Additionally, his video, ‘Airbnbust Will Destroy 90% Of Hosts,’ goes as far as calling out the type of STR business person who will suffer the most during the Airbnb slowdown.
“There are three types of hosts getting crushed right now in the Airbnbust,” he stated. “First, those that don’t have the guts to run their business the way it must be run in a hard situation. Second, those with too much pride or ego to do what has to be done due to entitlement. And third, those that are just so new to the space that they didn’t know there was content that could help them run an Airbnb business.”
From there, Rakidzich outlines what they must do to turn their fortunes around and become one of the 10% who are successful.
If you want to make the most of your STR business, even in hard times, Rakidzich has the insight that will give you the edge you need to not just survive but thrive.
About Sean Rakidzich
With over $10 million in revenue generated as an Airbnb host, Sean Rakidzich (previously of Airbnb Automated) is the leading expert, entrepreneur and influencer in short-term rental education and operations on the Internet. He will soon be expanding his teachings beyond just Airbnb to include Peerspace, Turo, VRBO, Booking.com, and more. For more information, please visit www.rakidzich.com/
