Tired of your 9 – 5 job and looking for more fulfillment? Do you dream of leaving the corporate world behind and doing things you’re passionate about such as farming, renting out cabins, churning butter, and working with the community?
In this success story, I speak with Todd Heyman, who for the past two years has been scaling a farm stay experience called Fat Sheep Farm where guests can rent out cabins, grow vegetables, milk cows, and eat the food they harvest at local restaurants.
Todd and his wife Suzy, who prior to becoming full-time farmers and hosts, worked in the city as an attorney and teacher. Todd decided to cut his ties to the hustle and bustle of city attorney life to follow his passions of farming. After 4 years of practice working on the land, he decided to apply his skills to the quaint town of Heartland, Vermont.
Video Transcript
00:00:00
I think the key for us is, you know, we’re not just renting a building more re we’re selling an experience on the farm. Kids want to collect eggs, milk sheet, take our goats on a leash out to pasture. I mean, these are things like that. Families, you know, come back for over and over again.
00:00:17
This is episode number three of Airbnb success stories. Welcome back to Airbnb success stories. I’m your host, Julian. Miyata. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journey in starting and growing their short-term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with useful information that will help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Since we are new shows, reviews would greatly help us grow. So please go on over to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, Facebook, SoundCloud, wherever you’re actively listening. And please leave us an honest review and we’ll give you a rental, a shout out on the next episode. So we actually got our first review on iTunes from Kate Birtch, who was in the last episode. And Kate says, Julian does a great job bringing together, experienced those and having casual conversations to explore all facets of being a short-term rental host.
00:01:05
Now, thank you so much, Kate. I really appreciate that. And if you haven’t already checked out that episode with Kate, it is fantastic. You know, Kate talks about her, her rental short term rental insurance company, and what the experience of going through the claim process and being a traveling digital nomad and so much awesome, useful information like investing overseas. And I love that. I love that interview. That that was such a fantastic conversation with her. Another quick little announcement is that we reached 100 downloads for the podcast. So we do have the YouTube and the, the videos on Facebook and YouTube have garnered a well over 400, 500 views, but we don’t, you know, there’s not too too much that we can actually track with that. Like maybe someone just watched it briefly, maybe they’re just scrolling through Facebook and they looked at it for a few seconds that counts as a view.
00:01:55
But when you actually have people downloading your podcast and listening to it, you know, that’s a hundred people that have actively listened to a hundred hours maybe, or maybe they didn’t listen to the whole hour, but you know, that’s, that’s pretty, that’s pretty awesome that a hundred people would download this show onto their, their, their phone or wherever and listen for an hour to these conversations. So, you know, it’s so cool. We were only our, our third episode right now and w we’re already at a hundred downloads. So thank you so much for everybody that is listening. And please let us know what you like, what you don’t like and leave a review about us today. I had the pleasure of speaking with Todd Haman, who currently runs a farm stay experience in Heartland, Vermont called fat sheep farming cabinets. He’s been taking mostly direct bookings, but in total he’s been on Airbnb and taking direct bookings, just shy of two years now, Todd and his wife, Susie left their stable jobs as attorney and teacher to take on hospitality.
00:02:50
Full-time by purchasing land, building a farm in cabins and allowing guests to experience what it’s like living and eating from the land. That situation is unique in that 80% of his bookings are direct bookings and only 20% is through the Airbnb platform. Please note that Todd did establish this property as a lodging facility isn’t affected under the same volatile regulations associated with Airbnbs and short term rentals. But the concept and strategies he’s applied are golden in scaling a short-term rental business. This is definitely an episode you do not want to miss. So every episode I take notes and I take about five to 10 of the key points that you can actually apply towards your short-term rental business, to be able to produce more and get more stays, just going over to Airbnb S s.com backslash show notes, and you can sign up and have those, those tips sent directly to your inbox, and then start being able to apply that towards your business.
00:03:43
And I just wanted to apologize for this episode. My video was not sinking up too well. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, unfortunately, you’re going to have to look at this a still image of my face, but we did have some issues with the video and the audio sinking up. So I didn’t want it to be too, too much confusing for you guys. So this will just be video portion of Todd and a still image of me. So we’re still figuring this stuff out guys, like I said, it’s not going to be perfect whenever you start something, but we are continuing to learn and improve. So please bear with me for this episode. And hopefully by next weeks, it will be all sorted out with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Welcome back host today. I have the special honor of speaking with Todd Haman. If you wouldn’t mind, please let the audience know a little bit about, a little bit more about who you are and what inspired you to get into short-term rentals.
00:04:34
Okay, well, we run a business called fat sheep farm and cabins, my wife and I it’s located in Heartland, Vermont, which is just south of Woodstock and Creechy, which is a pretty heavily visited area, particularly in the summer and the fall. We have five cabins on our property. Standalone units ranging from 480 square feet with just a queen bed and a futon in the living area to a little over 700 square feet with two queen beds, one in a open air loft, one in a bedroom, and then a sleeper sofa in the living room. So we can sleep, you know, six, sometimes seven with kids in the big ones. And the smaller ones are really designed for more like couples with young children. And we run a small diversified farm on our property. So unlike a pure a short-term rental experience, we offer a farm stay experience to the guests who stay with us.
00:05:34
They can spend some time with our goats and sheep and chickens, and they also can tour our growing fields and harvest vegetables. The cabins all have full kitchens, so they have, they’re given eggs from our chickens when they check in and then they have access to our vegetables that we grow on the farm. And so they can prepare meals with food that we’ve raised here. The farm also provides vegetables and eggs to area restaurants. We sell at local farmer’s markets. And so a lot of times our guests will her guests who don’t feel like cooking can still eat our produce by going to some area restaurants that we supply our busy time is from the summer and fall where we’re pretty much every day close to sold out. And then in the winter, we become a more of a weekend business, a lot of winter sport tourism from cross-country skiing, downhill snowshoeing. We have even have dog sledding and the town next door to us. That’s pretty much a short description of what we do
00:06:44
That is, that is really cool. I, I love the idea of working with the local restaurants and the farm to table experience. You know, even, even having been with the animals and being with the vegetables and people can eat the food that they are, that they are working with. I think that that’s a very unique and very creative way to be able to utilize the Airbnb platform and also using your direct bookings as well. Would you mind kind of what inspired you to, to do this? Was it just like one day you were like, I’m going to open up a farm and start doing this? Like what, what got you to where you are today?
00:07:21
No, it was definitely not like that. We’ve been here since 2016, my wife and I, and in our past lives, we used to live in around Boston and had city lives and city jobs. And when I met my wife, it was a few years after I quit my city job and I was working on different farms, trying to learn as much as I could from different farmers. And I knew I wanted to have some component of farming in my life, but I wasn’t sure how to, how to do it. I didn’t, I knew I didn’t want to be a full-time farmer and have that be the sole means of income. And after I met my wife who had often wanted to start like a bed and breakfast or a restaurant, or in we’re both quite into food, as you might imagine, we started just brainstorming about what kind of business we could create, where we could enjoy growing our own food, and also sharing that experience with people.
00:08:37
Cause we enjoy hosting. And we just came up with the idea jointly of starting a farm and using separate cabins on the farm at, for the rental experience, because we felt like that would be more popular with the kind of people who would be visiting a farm then say like rooms and a little bit of breakfast with neighbors and your walls and stuff. And so we just started brainstorming for about a year. We were looking at property and coming up with ideas and then eventually found this place and bought it and hit the ground running.
00:09:15
Wow. That that’s, that’s a really bold, and I think that that’s really inspiring that you’re able to take your passions and your interests. What, what, what was your, your, your federal job? Was it a federal or a corporate? You said you worked in the city.
00:09:29
Yeah. I used to be an attorney and my wife, Susie used to be a teacher.
00:09:36
You really went from very stable, reliable jobs to, to opening up a farm and having, you know, people stay in your cabins and what you know, that, that must, that takes a lot of courage. What did, how did you have the confidence and the, the, to be able to go and purchase this farm and open up these cabins and then start creating this experience? Because when we spoke prior to the recording, you said you’ve only been on the, on taking bookings since June 15th, a couple of years ago. Yeah. So how did, how did you, how did you know, like this is going to be profitable, this is going to be enough for us to be able to quit our jobs and do this full-time
01:10:18
Well, we didn’t know. We still don’t know, but yeah, I had worked as a lawyer in Boston for 11 years and I owned a, a condo in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I had gotten to the point where I just didn’t want to do that anymore. And I had been spending, I’d been saving money for about four to five years, pretty carefully living well below my means to be able to take some time because I originally thought I needed to know exactly what I wanted to do before I could quit. So there wouldn’t be the danger of feeling financial pressure to end up doing something I don’t want to do again. And instead I just stayed there longer trying to figure it out and eventually realized that what I needed to do was to not have a preconceived idea of what was coming next. And so I saved until I felt like I could go a couple years and figure that out.
01:11:21
And when I quit, I just signed up for some cooking classes and worked on a farm in Austin, Texas for a total change of pace and just took job after job from there that would just pay the bills and lived in, you know, little studio apartments and continued to learn skills with respect to farming and just my interests, and eventually met Susie and started doing that jointly. And it just, it came from that, you know, we’re in a tiny little town in Vermont and I came from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there’s a big, you know, my little, my little condo in Cambridge was three bedrooms and like 1700 square feet. And I sold it for, for more than what it cost to buy a 60 acre farm in Vermont. So there was a little bit of security by shifting from a high price housing market to a, a lower priced housing market. And that certainly made the jump a lot more comforting.
01:12:28
Wow. That’s, that’s really, that’s really inspiring that you’re able to go from something that, you know, you weren’t as passionate about to something that you, you really love, you know, diving into the cooking and the farm experience and moving away from the city. What, you know, I think what a lot of people want is ultimately to be able to do what they’re passionate about, to take their interests and take what they want and move away from the traditional jobs that maybe they didn’t necessarily want to get into, but they knew it was stable. When, when you were looking to make that transition to how did you confidently know like this, this is going to work because with Airbnb and the short-term rentals and all the, all the regulations and stuff like that that are being imposed on short stays, how, how were you able to know, like this is going to work and I’m going to be able to make my living off of people staying in my cabins because you also have the farm business, but that’s, aside from that, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re able to make your money from the cabin. So how were you able to confidently build a business on the shorter, shorter term stay?
01:13:39
I mean, we w we weren’t able to know it. I mean, a lot of people asked us that, but we didn’t, you know, we spent a lot of time driving around Northern new England visiting popular tourist destinations, considering like, how seasonal is the tourism? Could we be a year round operation? So we would be booked more. What do land prices, what do land prices look like? Just outside the tourist town we looked at also obviously like, is the soil available to us gonna be soil we can grow food with? And, you know, I think a lot of where we ended up as a combination of all of those variables coming together in this one property, right out of Woodstock, Vermont, which is, I mean, now festivals here are you around, there’s constantly people visiting. And when you jump one town outside of Woodstock, the cost of housing goes way down.
01:14:44
And I would guess, you know, it was, so it was sort of just, you know, looking at what did the vacancy rates look like in the hotels, in those places, when we went on their online booking things to kind of get a sense to it, and then trying to guesstimate what we thought we could charge per night, once we’re fully up and running on five units and considering other ways that we could also bring in revenue, whether it be through workshops or experiences on the farm or merchandise, and just really ballparked everything. And, and so far, it’s been pretty accurate to what I mean, if anything, we’re a little ahead of schedule than where we thought we’d be. And based on how popular we’ve been, we’re pretty optimistic that in the next couple of years, we’re really going to be able to grow it a lot faster than we have been.
01:15:43
I think, I think that that’s, that’s really, really interesting. And when we spoke prior to the recording, you said that 80% of your bookings or direct bookings and about 20% has been Airbnb, but that’s been increasing. What w what has been the most challenging part of growing your, your, your short-term rental business? Well,
01:16:02
I guess I should, I guess I didn’t answer your last question in full, which I’m realizing in that is that one of the things that we did when we started this business is we actually are licensed to Vermont lodging facility. So all of the efforts to clamp down on short-term rentals don’t really affect us because we got a public health license from the state of Vermont when we opened. And in order to build the cabins, we had to comply with public building codes. And so basically since we were starting from scratch, we were sort of forced to be a licensed short-term rental facility, as opposed to, you know, converting our house or, you know, a barn or something on the property and to, into lodging, you know, these, these were from the ground up. And so that’s one way we’ve avoided some of those regulations. I realized I didn’t answer that before. Can you remind me what you had just asked me now? Cause it was
01:17:09
No, but I still think that that’s a, I think it’s a, it’s still of a valid, I think, I think your story and how you’ve kind of built up this business regardless of the regulations is, is, is really inspiring because it’s, you know, you’re like, like you said, 80% of your bookings are coming from direct bookings and only 20% through Airbnb. And that’s, that’s a very impressive what w what has been, what has been the most challenging part of growing that really kind of naturally,
01:17:39
All right, sorry. So, right from when we opened, you know, we were, we created a Google business account. So we listed ourselves as a hotel. We joined the Woodstock chamber of commerce and their lodging group. So we’re on their webpage. The green mountain horse association is five miles from us about, and we are a member for them, and they bring about 10,000 people a year here. And we’re probably one of the closest places to stay to them. And we basically, from the beginning, started advertising as if we were a hotel. And we also relentlessly tried to get the Boston globe, which is probably our closest big city to CA to come up and experience the, our farms day and write about us. So we were very focused on direct bookings, right from the beginning. And all of those efforts sort of panned out in the beginning.
01:18:38
Lots of people were finding us through the Woodstock chamber, through the green mountain horse association, about a year after we opened the editor of the travel section for the Boston globe came up and spent tonight. And she ended up writing a review of us that was on the front page of the Sunday travel section in the Boston globe last August. And I would say since that story has run, probably over half of the people who book with us, found us through reading that story. And so, you know, we’re now going to start targeting other media markets to try and get in maybe Connecticut and New York city, because we’ve seen what that does for getting direct bookings. So the challenge is really just figuring out where to put yourself, you know, Facebook and Instagram obviously helped a lot. TripAdvisor also is great and right from the beginning, you know, because this is really our focus for, for revenue.
01:19:43
We’ve, you know, we’re direct hands-on with our guests as they explore the farm. And so we can really be in touch with how their experience is going and make sure they have a great time and make sure whatever needs they have are met. And we sort of build relationships with them through interacting with them. We’ve had a lot of people come three, four times already, and we haven’t been open two years and their kids like develop relationships with our livestock. They know the names of our animals and look forward to coming back to seeing them. And so it’s very easy for us to approach our guests, to ask them to write reviews on Google and TripAdvisor. And when people are trying to figure out where they want to stay, those reviews play a huge, a huge role in that decision. And so, you know, once you get up there and on there, if you can start getting all your guests to write those reviews, when people start searching the area about where they want to stay on those sites, you come up higher and higher.
02:20:44
And if people really read heartfelt reviews, where you can tell that the people are authentically expressing their enjoyment, and it’s not just, you know, nonsense quick writeup, it really has an impact on people’s decision about where they want to stay. And I think, you know, our reviews have played a big role, also like the Boston globe article and getting people to come here. We’ll often have people comment to us. They saw us on the globe, or they saw us in Airbnb. And then they looked around and read our TripAdvisor reviews and couldn’t believe how positive they were and decided they had to try it and then confirm that they had as good of an experience that they read about and then write us or another review. So that’s, that’s really what we’ve done. I don’t know if it’s any more complicated than that, but that’s how we’ve, we’ve focused on sort of building our brand and, and getting our name out there.
02:21:36
No, I th I think you, you, you’ve been doing a brilliant job Todd with, with working with local media agencies, having establishing that, that business on the social media side, because I think when we were also speaking, you said that a lot of your businesses also coming from Instagram, which is pretty unique because I think that’s, I think that’s the challenging part for a lot of hosts nowadays is trying to identify themselves as like a brand and a business, because people are just posting their, their listings up on Airbnb and all these different platforms, direct booking and stuff like that. And they’re like, well, nobody’s, nobody’s utilizing us through any of these other platforms. They’re getting all their business through Airbnb. And like we were speaking prior to the recording was that, you know, you only get 20% of your bookings and you like to shy away from Airbnb because of the complications, you know, them being like we were speaking about in the previous episode being, they don’t represent the hosts super well at times because they, they are trying to support the, the customers, which in the, a detriment for a business owner like yourself.
02:22:41
What w what, what experiences do you have, like with Airbnb and trying to establish your business aside from that, because right now you are taking bookings through Airbnb and that you said that has been increasing, but what, what has been your experience with Airbnb? And have you been trying to establish yourself outside of the platform?
02:23:03
Well, I mean, establish ourselves outside the platform is really just promoting ourselves on all those other websites and through social media. I think the key for us is, you know, we’re not just renting a building more re we’re selling an experience on the farm. And, you know, there’s a lot of interest in that. You know, kids want to collect eggs, milk sheet, take our goats on a leash, out to pasture. I mean, these are things like that. Families, you know, come back for over and over again. And they also love seeing their kids like pull carrots out of the ground or dig for a potato and find one, and then go cook it. So having an experience that you can promote in conjunction with your rental is I think a key way to differentiate yourself from other lodging options. And so even, you know, my wife often also we’ll do we sell bread at the farmer’s market?
02:23:58
She bakes sourdough breads. And so she’ll do like a sourdough bread baking class as part of it, when we’re cooking, when she’s baking from market, they can come into the house and learn how she does it. And so if you can offer some kind of experience in conjunction with it, even if it’s not you offering the experience. For example, we do a lot of promoting of other area businesses because it gives people a reason to come to the area and stay with us. So, for example, in the winter, we have a pretty unusual business in Windsor, Vermont called Braeburn Siberians, and they run dog sledding tours, where you basically, you know, it’s like mish-mosh Wolf Wharf, and you’re a ride in on a sled. And 10 dogs are pulling you around the Vermont countryside for anywhere from a half hour to three hours. And that’s a pretty unusual experience.
02:24:48
So we’ll promote them on our Instagram, Facebook on our website. And even if people have no interest in our farm, it’s a way for them to, oh, let’s go up, stay at the farm and then go dog sledding. So even if you don’t have something you yourself can offer, being able to promote your area as part of promoting your lodging helps a lot, the downsides or the challenges of working with Airbnb, you had asked about there. There’s really the, the number one for us is that they have an extenuating circumstances policy. When a guest makes a booking, you know, in theory you have a cancellation policy and ours is super strict. You know, we get over a month’s notice or there’s no refund, but in practice, what happens often is a guest will say that either the guests, him, or herself, or some member of their group, and, you know, the names of those people are nowhere on the reservation.
02:25:47
So there’s no way for Airbnb to even confirm if, if the person who’s claiming to be sick or can’t travel for some reason was ever even part of the reservation to begin with, writes to Airbnb and says, I need to cancel at the last minute. And pretty much our experience as an Airbnb, lets them out. And for us, when you’re sold out all summer and fall, that’s a big revenue hit. And you know, it’s very hard to fill something on 24 hours notice. So that’s something which we just, we, we, we would like to be able to see what Airbnb is seeing. You know, if somebody’s gotten a cancer diagnosis, you know, that’s one thing, if you know, a fourth member of a four person party who didn’t even make the booking, you know, has the flu, that’s another. And we would like to be able to independently evaluate those situations and make a decision about whether we want to refund the money at the last minute or not.
02:26:41
And we can’t do that with Airbnb and same with disputes about damage to the property or charging for pet fees. You know, all of that has to go through their dispute center. There’s no automatic way to collect it. Whereas if we do the bookings directly, you know, we have their credit card on file and we charge them if they break something. And it’s just a lot easier. It’s a lot less time. They’re not on the phone with an Airbnb representative and who knows what country, trying to get them to enforce the policy and send pictures. You know, it’s just a lot, it’s a lot more hassle. So we would like to have greater control over the guest experience really, and our interaction with the guest regarding cancellations damage, things like that.
02:27:27
Yeah. I think, I think that that’s a very, I think that’s a really good point that a lot of people are trying to, they’re trying to do the direct bookings, but they’re also their primary source of, of leads is through Airbnb. How are you utilizing Airbnb to be able to boost your listing? Because you said about right now, there’s 20% coming through Airbnb. Yeah.
02:27:48
It’s about 20%, but that’s how it’s been since the beginning. It seems like it’s been going up, but also our direct bookings are going up. So it’s hard to know if Airbnb is doing something different. The one thing that Airbnb has started doing, which we don’t don’t like very much is they’ve, they’ve started buying Google ads that appear above our website. When, when someone already knows our business exists and they type fat sheep farm say they read the Boston globe article into the Google search bar. The first result that comes up now is an ad from Airbnb, offering them to book with Airbnb instead of with us. And obviously they didn’t find us through Airbnb. They found us through something else or they wouldn’t be Googling our name there. And so that is I think a way in which we’re losing some direct bookings to Airbnb, but we do want to have our name in the Airbnb booking because we want to build our brand.
02:28:44
And there’s probably also people who find us on Airbnb, see our name throughout our listing, Google it, and then decide to book directly. So basically I, you know, it’s a little dance back and forth where we’re trying to increase the number of clues in our listing with Airbnb, that we are a real standalone business and you don’t have to go through Airbnb. For example, none of our promotions or discounts are available to Airbnb customers. And we put that in our Airbnb listing. So if a guest sees no promotional rates, no discounts are available to you. If you book through Airbnb, perhaps that guests starts thinking about that. And he’s like, well, I want a promotional rate. So I’m going to go find them elsewhere and book that way. So, you know, that’s what we’re doing to try and manage it. But you know, in, as we look forward into the future, we also may start limiting the dates that are even available for Airbnb bookings. For example, we might stop making weekends available since we know we can sell those out, we might just not put them on Airbnb. And then we don’t have to worry about extenuating circumstances and don’t have to worry about collecting pet fees or damages to the property, et cetera.
02:29:59
Do you find that Airbnb, even with the ex extenuating circumstances clause and, and the, the issues with the, with the, the ads, are you still finding that through Airbnb that you’re able to be profitable? Or do you feel that it’s taking away from your direct bookings?
03:30:17
I mean, we’re able to be profitable. We’re just let every booking through Airbnb is less profitable. I mean, what y’all, so when you start using more than one channel, so right now we just have a direct booking engine and Airbnb, but we plan to add booking.com soon, but it would be an absolute nightmare to try and coordinate all those calendars separately. So you basically have to get booking software, which they call it channel management, where it basically sinks your bookings from Airbnb, with the other calendars. And obviously that’s going to be a subscription fee. And a lot of the ways that those are set up is that they take a percentage. For example, if there’s an Airbnb booking, they take a percentage of that booking to pay for the channel, managing the sinking of the calendars. And so not only do we lose some of the money to Airbnb because they booked through Airbnb, we then lose some of the money to the channel manager. Whereas if they had booked through our engine, our direct booking engine, we’re only losing what we would lose to process the credit card.
03:31:18
So when, when you’re working with a direct, with the direct booking, which is your primary source of occupancy and Airbnb, how are you handling that? Do you have to go into the Airbnb calendar and then cut those days off? Or have you ever had issues with people direct booking and then the dates were available on Airbnb and they’ve kind of cross across booked?
03:31:39
No, I mean, before we were handling it manually, so every time we had a reservation, we would go and block it and it was a nightmare and it was very time consuming. So what we did is invest in booking software. There’s quite a few on the market. We went with a product called think reservations, which is a relatively new small company. Most of the people who work there have previously managed ins or short-term rentals. And it has some growing pains, but overall we’re pretty happy with the product and it automatically nobody can book on Airbnb without the software checking to see if on our direct booking calendar it’s still open or not. And then that software also allows us to put availability up online. So we used to take phone calls and emails, telling people what, what was available, what the prices were. We don’t do that anymore. Now that’s all on our website. People can go on there and plug in dates. They want to come. It tells them what’s available and what the pricing would be. And so that’s been a huge time saver for us because not only do we not have to keep the calendars updated, but we actually don’t even need to tell people what’s available anymore.
03:32:52
So, so what’s the difference between the channel management software and the think reservations?
03:32:58
Well, it, it offers so you could sign up with think reservations and just have a direct booking engine on your website. But then if you, and it’s, you know, a subscription for that, you know, we pay a fee, a flat fee for that every month. And then we would pay whatever the credit card processor that they work with, charges us to process the credit cards. Now you can add to your think reservations, subscription channel management services, which will allow you to connect with other platforms. So for example, with Airbnb, the way think reservations gets compensated for the channel management because they take 3% of our Airbnb bookings. So, you know, we’ll be losing a little bit to Airbnb and then we lose 3% to think reservations our low, our, our flat fee to just have think reservations as our direct booking engine is only $50 a month, which to us is, is life saving in terms of the amount of time it saves about not having to tell people what’s available and what the prices are. And so really now that we have a direct booking engine like that, the challenge will be to steer as many people away from the third party platforms to increase the earnings off each rental and minimize what we’re paying to those third parties and get more people booking directly, basically grow our brand so much that those third party platforms represent a smaller and smaller percentage of our rental.
03:34:27
That, that, that that’s a really useful tip. And I think every, everybody that is listening to this, I would suggest going back and relistening to that, because I think that that’s a big time saver if you’re trying to build your direct bookings in your brand that way.
03:34:40
Yeah. And I, I would add that if we were starting again, we from day one, even though it’s not going to be that hard on day one to manage your reservations, cause you start slow from day one, have the software there because you know, we’re experiencing a huge savings of time because of calendars, reservation, inquiries, all that’s gone. Now, we don’t have to sync anything. It all is automatic. But the other thing that it does is that it allows you to see your vacancy rates or occupancy rates for by unit overall. It allows you to break down what you charged for taxes, pats, rent. I mean, all of that is automatically recorded into the system when someone makes a reservation because it automatically calculates the pet fee, it automatically calculates the tax. And then it produces reports with that information for you at the click of a button.
03:35:33
So if we were starting over, the first thing we would do is have a strategy to have availability and booking happening online. I will say we did more research than I care to admit, trying to find the software to start that and transitioning to that from a manual system is a nightmare, which is why I would do it from day one in the future. Cause you’re trying to basically make the switch when you already have all these existing reservations out there and you have to manually enter those into your system. And then you also lose all the benefits of the record keeping. So having an on day one is important, but what was the other, I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought there, but I was going to pick another point about how well basically the main point I want to make is that it’s, it would be good to do that from day one. And there are products like Rez, nexus is another booking software that you can get channel management from. And they actually offer a website as part of their product. Think reservations is more of a function you add to your existing website, but there are products like Reza nexus, and my VR where the website is part of an integrated fully into your booking engine. So if you’re starting from scratch, you might consider using a product like that where your website and booking engine are all part of the same software.
03:36:56
Well, yeah, I think, I think that that’s really, really useful, but just to, just to clarify the channel management software is that’s the only really useful if you are doing direct bookings. So if you’re using just primarily Airbnb, it, it doesn’t really support you in any way.
03:37:15
Right? Yeah. So channel management really means calendar sinking and rates sinking. And so if you’re only using the Airbnb platform, you don’t really need to sync with anything else because you’re not, you don’t have a calendar from another source. So yeah. Channel management services are only needed if you’re taking bookings from multiple places. Okay.
03:37:35
Okay. And w what I, what I want to hit on, because I think that this is a very, what what’s so great about speaking with you, is that what w what is, how should I word this? Is that the, you established your, your business as like a hotel, is, is, would you recommend that people that are looking to build a brand and build a business out of short term, shorter term rentals or experience, would you recommend them establish maybe like a bed and breakfast as a business or something a little bit more established than just a, like a short term rental, like Airbnb?
03:38:16
Well, I mean, I would recommend, you know, I don’t know if you want to call it a bed and breakfast or a Airbnb or whatever you want to call it, but I would say that if you have the time to promote it and what your area has to offer, even if you’re not going to offer an experience, but what experiences are available in your area, you really should have. I would recommend having a website, creating a Google business account, creating a TripAdvisor account, getting your guests to write those reviews. And you’re going to start showing up in Google searches when people are looking for places to stay. And when people go into TripAdvisor and plug in your area, you’re going to start showing up there, the more reviews you get from your guests. And so even if you’re operating, you know, just one rental unit in a very touristy town, you can really promote it online with a separate website. And as you get each of those people who come and stay with you to write something online, you’re going to become a more and more popular place for people to stay and an easier and easier place for people to find without Airbnb.
03:39:20
I think, I think that’s, that’s what you’re doing so awesome is that you’ve really built up that online brand presence. And you’ve established yourself with networkers and other ways to be able to do that search engine optimization, because that’s really what, what Airbnb is. It’s a platform for search engine optimization for your, your, your units. And, you know, in, in what they receive is they receive a commission for being able to publish your, your unit. But then you also have to abide by their customer service and their, their rules. But I think that that’s really, really important. And I think everybody that is listening to this, that you should definitely try to build your brand, build your experience, offside the platform, and just use Airbnb as what it is. It’s a, it’s a platform for hotels. It’s a platform for people’s homes. It’s a platform to promote your business, promote your brand. And I think some people maybe just look at that, like, it’s their bread and butter, which, you know, people can do, and you definitely can, can work the work with that. But for a brand that you’re trying to scale and have your own customers, like you’re doing Todd, it’s important to separate and differentiate between the, the Airbnb software.
04:40:33
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s no reason it’s not, you don’t have to be big to build your own brand and business. And you don’t like for us, we have a farm stay experience we can offer. We can teach people how to make cheese baked bread, collect eggs from our chickens. That there’s a lot they can do here. But even if you’re just in a city and you’re not offering any of that, you know, if you have social media accounts and you post your dinners out at great restaurants or activities you do in your area, like there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t grow your brand through exposing people to what they can do when they stay with you and build partnerships with local businesses. You know, we work with local restaurants and a grocery store and a farmer’s market. And you can create relationships with other businesses where partnerships maybe work out discounts. If the person’s staying with you, they get this. And you steer them to the restaurants that you think that people are going to enjoy, but there’s all kinds of ways that you can promote even a single, if you have an independent website and TripAdvisor and Google, all of which is close to free,
04:41:40
And you’re, you’re promoting these businesses just for the sole purpose of giving your customers a better experience. You’re, you’re not working with these businesses necessarily to receive anything from them,
04:41:52
Right? So we sell vegetables to restaurants, but we don’t sell them to just any restaurant. We sell them to restaurants that we enjoy. And then we promote those restaurants to our guests. But even if those restaurants didn’t buy vegetables from us, we would promote them to our guests because we want our guests to have a great experience while they stay with us, because that’s what caused them coming back. And so, for example, we work with a restaurant called Mongolia pizza, which is basically like a 20 seat restaurant. And it’s very complex, I would say, is that word for the cuisine? And it’s unbelievable for the area. We love working with them. And it’s just a few people running. It just like, it’s my wife and I are running our business. And they’re very hands-on with all their customers and talk to them and get a lot of repeat business and develop relationships with them, just like we do.
04:42:42
And so, you know, we’ve had people come and stay with us multiple times and they also go back to that same restaurant multiple times, and they know the people who run the restaurant. And so what we’re trying to do is make sure that when someone comes and stays with us, they have a great time. And, you know, whether we get anything from that restaurant or how many vegetables they buy from us, that doesn’t matter. We just want to make sure that we are promoting an excellent experience. Cause that’s, what’s going to have people coming back over and over again.
04:43:09
Yeah. I think, I think that that’s really, really unique. You’re, you’re kind of establishing yourself as the hub for a person’s experience. So they stay with you. Not only are they getting, you know, the, the room, but they’re getting the experience, they’re getting the, the, your, your, your expert. You’re like the concierge, you know, where they can go, what they can do. And I think that that’s what a lot of people are lacking in their, their Airbnbs. It’s just, they’re looking at that as just like a home, and this is where you stay, but what you’re doing to set yourself apart and to be able to get those direct bookings is you’re offering this whole experience. So that one, when I go up to Vermont and, you know, I’m, I’m wanting to stay in the area. I can stay with you, and I can expect top quality service, not only in the state, but in the experience and the places that you recommend. And I think that that’s a really unique point about your, your, your place. Are there other, any products that you use in your rentals that has helped save you time and money?
04:44:09
Well, definitely the booking software that comes with the channel management is probably our, our number one time-saver, we’ve switched to using QuickBooks online for accounting, which can automatically sync with your bank accounts and credit cards. So it just funnels all that information right into the accounting software, which is huge. Those two things, I think, have been the biggest time savers for us as we’ve grown, as far as other products.
04:44:41
Yeah. Things like, like, like any types of like special towels or special, any, any like material, things that have been able to help reduce the time or money in your units,
04:44:54
I would say, well, like we, we outfitted our cabins with pretty high quality stuff on purpose and the way we got it all at a price that was way more reasonable. Was we actually, for the majority of our furniture bedding. And let me think, anything else, mostly furniture and bedding, including like sofas, chairs, beds. We have little boot trays in the cabin because obviously in Vermont, you’re coming in from snow, mud, dirt, all of those kinds of things, rugs, we actually got through LL bean, which is kind of on the pricier side of things. But LL bean has regular sales of 25% off throughout the year. And if you sign up for a credit card at the time, you’re making your purchase, you get another 20% off. And then if you go to the store in Freeport, Maine, you get free shipping. Even of the stuff that ships on big trucks, like sleeper sofas.
04:45:56
So we basically drove to Maine. We had a list going and we were waiting for a sale and waiting for, to drive there and get a credit card all at the same time. And we basically bought like all of our furniture, bedding and rugs and everything in one trip. And we basically paid 50% of what we would have normally paid because of those specialists. So, and that’s something I think is still eight years still able to do. And we all the time get people asking us where our sheets, from, where our towels from taking pictures of the tags, you know, it makes a big difference. The other thing we did is we, we, we got pretty nice mattresses cause we figure, you know, if someone doesn’t sleep well, you’re, you know, we basically got platforms for a lot of the beds that weren’t very expensive and then spent more money on mattresses. Things like that have been helpful. We’re a big fan of magic erasers for getting stuff off walls that are painted. I don’t know. Those are the products that come to mind.
04:47:04
And is there anything that you do specifically? I know that that when people stay with you, that they are having this experience, which is leads them to be more tied into your, your stay. But is there anything that you do that has helped your guests leave positive reviews?
04:47:21
I would say, you know, we, we, we do a pretty detailed check-in process where I walked through all of the physical components of the cabin, how to use the heat, how to lock your doors, how to, what we compost, what we recycle, et cetera, where they can go on the farm, what time they can experience livestock chores, things like that. So they spend a little bit of time with me when I check them in, but then our philosophy is pretty much leave them alone unless they ask for something. And we have a book, a binder in each cabin that has a lot of the information I go over there with them plus extra stuff about where to go in the area and what to do. And we also let them check out on their own. So they don’t have to come find us. And we have a little checklist of things they do.
04:48:10
So it’s a combination of a pretty high quality introduction to the property and then absolute privacy if they want it after that. And then a lot of the guests do participate in the experiences. So we’re able that you, you know, if someone comes up for animal chores, we don’t have to go knock on their door and say, is everything okay? Or do you need anything or send them an email because we’re going to see them throughout the day. And we do check in with them. Anytime we see someone after their first night in the cabin, up in the barn, while we’re doing chores or something, we’ll ask, do you need anything was anything missing? We asked people on their last day, if we see them loading up their cars, if there was anything they wished was in the cabin that wasn’t in there. And, you know, they can tell by the stuff that we put in the cabin, which is high quality.
04:48:56
And by the fact that we ask that we care a lot about their experience. And we also are pretty, you know, everybody wants to automate the request for reviews. You know, Airbnb obviously has it automated where you get sent an email saying, write a review. We’re actually selective. You know, we, we don’t ask everybody for a TripAdvisor and Google review as part of like an automated email. They get, we, we individually evaluate how we feel we did with the guests. And if we feel confident, you know, maybe they wrote in the little guest books that we have in the units and we saw what they wrote there, or we read their Airbnb review and they loved it. We asked the people were fairly confident, would write a positive review to put one up on TripAdvisor or Google.
04:49:45
And now I think that that’s also something that I want to hit on is that you offer experiences with your SES, obviously that that’s, that’s very noticeable when they do the direct bookings, because they’re able to see your, your website and everything that you have to offer. Have you noticed that with Airbnb though, that they’re not taking the experiences or how do you, how do you promote the experiences to them when they do bookings through Airbnb?
05:50:08
No. We mentioned the experience as, as part of it. I mean, that’s what we have to do because we obviously charge more than if you were just going to rent an Airbnb in our town. And we have to, because we spend a lot of time taking people around the farm. And so we do promote that aspect of it with our, with our listings on Airbnb, we mentioned the Boston globe article in the first sentence of our Airbnb listing, again, as a way to encourage people, to discover our business online beyond Airbnb. But yeah, we, they take advantage of it as much, as much as the next person. It is not uncommon, especially like during foliage season or winter when people are coming to ski or look at leaves that they just look at the pictures of the cabins and the views from the porches of the cabins, which basically look at a forest at hillside.
05:51:01
And they just book based on that. And so definitely the fall and winter bookings are maybe not as interested in the farm as during the rest of the year, but you know, we have baby lambs come in April and a lot of people believe it or not. There’s like baby lamb, tourism, where people want to come up with their kids and let them hold a little, you know, 12 inch tall lamb. So there are things happening on the farm in the off season that people are interested in, but it’s definitely less than in the summer.
05:51:31
And how are you promoting these experiences? Because I know that Airbnb just recently started offering experiences to people. Are you listing your experiences on the platform and how are you promoting these experiences?
05:51:43
You know, we aren’t, because right now the experiences that we offer on the farm are only available to the people who book in the cabins. And so we basically just promote it in our listing. We enter sort of a gray area with respect to our state licenses. If we started promoting the experiences without the cabins, and we have decided to avoid that gray area for now, since what we would really like to do is develop those experiences a little bit, get them polished, really fine. For example, this year, we’re going to start teaching people how to make cheese in our cheese room. And once we feel that we have something worth paying for we’ll, we’ll cross that bridge of whether we want to start promoting the experience. Someone who’s not staying in the cabin, but our view of it is, you know, part of the reason people stay here is there are only five units. They interact directly with us when they learn something about the farm. They’re learning it from me or my wife. And part of the reason they like it is they’re not in a room with 45 other people, you know, trying to ask a question. And so I think, you know, we’re going for high quality on a small scale, and then we hope to charge appropriately for that.
05:53:01
And if you could give one piece of advice to someone who’s trying to start a short-term rental business, what, what would that be?
05:53:08
I guess I would say my number one would be start with a website and direct booking software be up on TripAdvisor, Google, Instagram, Facebook. And don’t just settle for Airbnb because there’s absolutely no reason you can’t have direct bookings. You’re willing to put the time into promoting your rental and what you can do when you stay in your rental, even if it’s just area offerings and not offerings directly from you.
05:53:37
That’s, that’s, that’s a really good, really good piece of advice. And is there one house rule that has really kind of saved you before? Like one thing that you’ve had in your, your house manual that has kind of been able to keep, keep you out of trouble?
05:53:53
I don’t think there’s a house rule. A lot of people don’t follow the house rules. I would say the one thing that we did because we want it to be able to offer one night stays Sunday to Thursday. We don’t do that on weekends. You have to stay at least two nights. The one thing that we have discovered is, you know, it’s a pain to rent a building for one night. And so we have made the cleaning fee a little more substantial. Originally. We didn’t even have one. We just included it in the price of the rental, which was a big mistake. I would say, having a hefty cleaning fee, if you’re going to do one night rental so that if you do rent it, you don’t feel like you were, you feel like you made some money off that rental. And if it excludes a few people who don’t want to spend that much to stay there one night, that’s fine. There are plenty of people out there who will not blink at those prices depending on what your area is like, if you’re in a high tourist area. And that’s a good way to encourage longer-term bookings is to make your feet a little heftier.
05:54:53
Where do you see short-term rentals in the, in the future?
05:54:58
Well, I mean, I follow what’s happening in Vermont and like I said, we’re licensed. So we’re not, we’re not directly affected by efforts to shut them down or limit them. I would say, you know, successful short-term rentals, aren’t going to be ones that can differentiate themselves. And I think experience is important, making sure that you can offer that or promote the experiences in your area. And then, you know, regulatory-wise you see, you know, I think our state just started requiring people to have some kind of book or something that talks about like safety and exit routes in case of fire and stuff. It’s not like full on regulations, but it requires you to at least think about it and have some information available. I think you’re going to see more of that, you know, more, more regulation of the short-term rental market. And I think if you’re, I think the way that the regulatory entities are starting to look at things is, you know, if you’re an owner occupied property, it’s probably going to be a lot easier to do it.
05:55:57
Then if you have a standalone house that you’re renting and you don’t live on the property at the same time, I think that those kinds of rentals are going to be viewed as pure vacation rentals and subjected to more and more regulation. At least here in Vermont, as time goes on and it seems like the balance that regulators are trying to strike here at least is there’s a difference between someone who lives on their property, cares about what’s happening on it. And somebody, you know, lives in another state and just has a house for rentals. And I think they’re going to come down hard on the people who are out of state, just renting a building and be real lenient on the folks who live there.
05:56:35
Well, I’m tired. I just want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your, out of your busy schedule, to be able to educate the listeners, educate the people that are looking to increase their, their Airbnbs and their short-term rentals and their experiences. I think you are killing it. You are doing such an awesome job with the, with the branding and the, the experience and the in the, in the marketing. I think you are kind of like the epitome of w
