Conversations with The Karwells Emily Karnaz & Sarah Glidewell

Today we’d like to introduce you to The Karwells Emily Karnaz & Sarah Glidewell

Hi The KarWells, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We got our official start as business partners in 2020, when we, like a lot of people, had to be scrappy to make it work. While I was finishing my masters program in 2019 Sarah was dabbling in Airbnb Arbitrage (renting, furnishing, & rerenting). So at the beginning of 2020 when I was looking for a job, I was helping Sarah design new units as she began to scale. Those units launched on March 8th of 2020. We all know what that meant. So as the world shut down, nobody was hiring and Sarah had 5 rents, including her own, to be responsible for. Thus KarWell Design was born. We spent a year and a half designing for other hosts and watching how they operated their businesses. After the opportunity came up for me to move to Thailand for my husbands job mid 2021 we decided to move our business remote and Sarah jumped in a van with her husband and traveled the country while we continued to design for other hosts.

After the shock of needing income went away after 2020 we realized quickly that designing and installing for other hosts is 100% working income. So when we were presented the opportunity to do marketing and social media for a fund in the short term rental space we jumped on it. We had begun to grow our own social media at this point so it made the transition easier. While working for that fund we jumped on as many meetings as possible to learn how to analyze deals all over the country.

At this point Sarah had her first property, a Michigan lakehouse, that would end up being the blueprint for our investing strategy moving forward.

We worked for the fund for about 7 months and then parted ways after deciding that we wanted to build our own brand with our own values, not someone else’s.

We now have a total of 5 properties in the Michigan market, 4 lakehouse & 1 large property. As well as some Texas arbitrage properties that run pretty smoothly at this point.

After being in this industry for a few years we are now learning and navigating new challenges such as regulation changes, changing interest rates, and always working on our hospitality standard.

Throughout this whole experience we started a mentorship program, The Space Between, for current and aspiring hosts that are looking to level up their business and build themselves the life they desire.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Oh my goodness, this question made me laugh immediately because we have run into sooo many challenges. But we have learned incredible lessons along the way.

The first lesson was at the beginning of our journey. I’ll give you a hint, the lesson is not to cut corners when getting your business started. After starting those arbitrage properties in 2020, Sarah still had them running and was able to still get them rented out. But being a new investor she didn’t invest into some of the things that are nonnegotiable for us now, like Ring cameras. Because she didn’t have one at one of the properties every single thing ended up getting stolen out of the apartment. Like I mean looked like a brand new unit.

Lesson 2, was to charge your worth. Now this lesson wasn’t so horrible because although looking back now we are realizing we charged almost nothing for our services, we did get the opportunity to learn from other hosts. So I would say the lesson here is understand what you are looking for when getting into a new endeavor. If it’s to learn from those ahead of you, bring them value, like we did with design and install, and understand that your return might not be immediate in the monetary sense, but overall it will be so worth it.

Now our struggles look like navigating neighbor relationships to our properties. Short term rental regulations being implemented in our markets. So we get to put on our business owner hats and get to work on problem solving and relationship building.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We are known as the STR design girls, or at least we used to be. I think, and hope, that now we are more known as the girls who are honest and willing to help those who are a few steps behind us.

We are 2 girls from a town of 800 people who grew up expecting our lives to look a certain way and honestly talk every day about how incredible our life actually is. So we want others to have that opportunity.

I think the thing we are the most proud of is that our mentorship program has been able to help people reach their goals. In the year and a half that it has been running we have been able to help new investors to gain the knowledge and confidence to buy their first property, build new businesses that they have been working on, get out of a 9-5 that they were unhappy in, & gain new skills that they can continue to implement moving forward.

We love hearing about the successes of our mentees and watching them take action and grow.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
There are so many people that deserve credit for helping us achieve what we have.

I will say first and foremost, our husbands. They have been supportive of us from the very beginning and have worked incredibly hard to keep our lives together while we go pursue our dream. We always say, they make the money we make the money grow.

We have also been incredibly lucky to have met colleagues who have become friends to us. We have a group of friends that we work with regularly but we also spend time with as much as possible. There is something to say about spending your time with people who not only inspire you to do better but also can be sounding boards for new ideas.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thekarwells.space/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekarwells?igsh=MXIwZW84bnZpMmNibg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr