STRSS 62 – What Makes A Vacation Rental Business Successful w/ Matt Landau

Video Transcript

 

00:00:00

Are you getting lazy with guests and taking shortcuts? Are you missing the essence of customer zero? And I just think it’s a nice reminder that everything the economy right now is going back to those core relationships that is the new rich, and I think it will be for the, the foreseeable future. So that’s just a nice reminder for anybody who’s listening that you can totally build your own little mini empire by taking things one step at a time.

  

00:00:28

This is six two of the short Rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed, go to cohost it.com for more information, welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Like any exceptional host. We all strive for five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy as it really helps support the show. If you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community.

  

00:01:08

Hey, what is going on? Host nation. I’m super excited to be back again with you this week. So today is gonna be the last day that you’re gonna be able to get your tickets for veterans live. If you wanna be able to hear myself and at 20 other amazing military veteran real estate experts speak on topics like mobile home park, investing, Birtch fix and flips, wholesaling, content creation, and so many other ways of being able to grow your real estate business. This is gonna be a really, really awesome event. Tickets start at just $99 and all proceeds a hundred percent of proceeds are going towards charity. So just a couple days ago was Memorial day. So if you did wanna support veterans and you did want to support veteran charities, our goal is to actually be able to purchase a home for a homeless veteran.

  

00:01:57

And again, if anybody decides to purchase, by going to Short Term, Sage dot com slash veterans live 20, and you get a ticket, just send me the receipt and you’ll get instant access to a whole suite of bonuses that we talked about in the previous episode, as well as a lottery, to being able to get access to our $2,000 program, the Vacation Rental machine Formula. Again, we’re just doing this to be able to help support veterans, as you all probably know, I am still active duty coast guards. So I definitely want to be able to help in whatever way that I can. In this episode, we have the special honor speaking with Matt Landow. Matt is the founder of VRM B or the Vacation Rental marketing blog and the inner circle, which is an online training resource where he is been helping hosts generate more bookings.

  

00:02:44

Matt entered into the Vacation Rental space in the middle of 2006, pre Airbnb and owned and operated the only luxury accommodation in Costco Viejo. This is a historic district in Panama city where Matt lived, Matt came into this business like all of us without any prior hospitality training or experience without the educational resources that we have like right now. And without that guidance, Matt really did everything wrong. But over the past decade, Matt has gained a lot of experience has talked to so many hosts and really I respect Matt because he is really about the host and you can actually watch his documentary series, where he was working with booking.com to create a travel series. It’s really awesome. It’s like a very cool vlog style where he’s actually going to different Vacation destinations and talking with hosts one on one about their Vacation Rental businesses.

  

00:03:39

But in this episode, Matt shares with us, the things that owners and managers should do right now during this crisis and how they can take advantage of this time to be able to sustain their business. If you like my show notes for this episode, as well as all these success secrets, then go to Short Term Sage dot com slash T R six two. Or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, then go to shorttermsage.com slash show notes. All that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Matt Landow. Matt is the founder of VRM B Vacation Rental marketing blog, and the inner circle, which is an online training resource where he’s been working with professional hosts or people that are just starting off, help them generate more bookings.

  

00:04:25

It’s an education platform, Matt. I really wanted to get him on the show because he is someone that I’ve been following since I first got into the shorter Rental space. And really, I feel like when you first get into this space, you’re, you’re, you know, you’re exposed to maybe some of the more popular people, some of the more like, you know, shorter Rental university or Airbnb automated. But when you really start looking into Vacation rentals as a professional career, you really start finding who are some of the other players in the space. And Matt was one of those people that I highly respected. He’s worked with companies like booking.com with an exclusive series, which was so awesome. It was like a very cool vlog style that like, oh man, I wish more people did stuff like that. But Matt, I’m super honored to have you on the show. If you please wouldn’t mind introducing yourself to the host nation, let them know who you are and what got you into short term rental.

  

00:05:11

Well, thank you for that great introduction. I am smiling here, ear to ear in quarantine. What got me started in Vacation Rental was a visit to the historic district of Panama city, Panama it’s called CACO Viejo. And when I first visited that neighborhood in 2006, it was a dark and dirty and dangerous UNESCO world heritage site. And I was smitten both with the architecture that you could just see the potential despite decades of ruin, but also with the community that lived there. It was this strange diverse group of individuals who had one thing in common, and it was that they loved this neighborhood. And I was on that first weekend. I stayed in the only luxury accommodations in town. It was a Vacation Rental, part of a fleet called Los the tulips. It was by two guys from Holland gateway for the neighborhood ed. I shouldn’t walked very helpful guidance and I really fell in love with this neighborhood in that weekend. And fast forward, six months later, they ended up leaving Panama and they sold me the business and poof overnight, no hospitality training, no real plan. Along with a business colleague, I was the owner of a fleet of Vacation Rental in the historic district and began just like everybody else from complete everything. So I I’m in that

  

00:07:07

Properties that did you initially pick

  

00:07:10

Started off with four, thus Los cuatro, the four tulips, Dutch people love tulips. They, they love tulips. So that was kinda the theme about the business. And we eventually expanded at one point we were at 15 and we eventually found what we felt was a sweet spot, right around nine.

  

00:07:31

When did you originally start this? What, what year was that?

  

00:07:34

That was 2007 when I took over toes and this was really pre Vacation Rental mayhem. It was pre Airbnb. People were aware of what a self catered Vacation Rental Rental property was, especially the kind of adventure traveler that was seeking out this kind of bizarre little destination, but it certainly wasn’t a mainstream, like we are all familiar with right

  

00:08:05

Now. You know, one, one of the things that, you know, hosts that are coming into the space and, you know, I you’re, you’re, you’ve been in the space for, for quite a while. And you’ve seen the shift in the, the Airbnb mayhem as, as you called it, but hosts that are coming into the space right now. I think maybe the mindset has shifted to where, you know, people are really focused on, you know, the profit and the, the amount of return that it can have. Is that something that you would, you would agree with or what do you think was kind of like the reason why you would get into Vacation rentals versus where hosts are getting in now?

  

00:08:37

Yeah, that’s a really great question. And I think there’s two sides to it. One, you have to have a profitable organization to call it a business to begin with. Otherwise it’s just a charity and to grow it, to continue to run it over time for it to be sustainable on the flip side is the passion element, how much you love it. And that too is so important in our space. My issue when Airbnb came about and just became this crazy hype machine, was that people started entering the space thinking that was quick, easy. And in a, of was I up your property on Airbnb overnight? You’re accepting bookings. That kind start mentality gets people into trouble when adversity falls, when shortcuts become way easier to pull when difficult decisions with guests arise. And what I have found over the years is that passion and in enthusiasm, in the hospitality side of it, which is a slow gain building real relationships with guests and with your community that almost always takes precedent over the quick win. But I have plenty of colleagues who are so passionate and so enthusiastic, and yet they’re not generating real enough of a profit to continue that passion project. So it really is a balance. And for anybody who’s coming in thinking that it’s gonna be a short victory, I remind them that it’s not. And for anyone who’s just in it because they love it. I remind them that you need to generate a profit in order to survive.

  

01:10:29

You know, when, when, when I, when I think of Youma, I think of some of the more traditional old school ways of, you know, being able to promote and help drive leads to, you know, a Vacation Rental business, which is kind of the foundation of, you know, this whole new Airbnb short term rental craze. You know, it’s where, where I came into this into it, where I was thinking, Hey, you know, I can rent out my basement. I can pay for my mortgage, but I mean, you’ve been doing this for, for quite a while. Where do you see the difference in hosts that are hosting now versus where you first started hosting? Were, were you going into it thinking like, you know, this is gonna be a really big money maker or was there different type of intentions when you wanted to even start?

  

01:11:10

Well, first off, I’m very honored that you say I’m old school. That’s also one of my favorite movies, but I certainly went into this with no plan whatsoever. And I think that’s what folks were entering now have in spades, a plan, a plan to invest in the, in getting it started a plan to market. These tools that we have now, like Airbnb is such an incredible springboard. Unlike maybe any other industry, you could say eBay, you could say maybe one of these other marketplaces, but I don’t know of any other industry where you can literally use one tool, springboard yourself into sustainability or independence over the course of a year or so with relatively little investments. So I went in with the mistake of not having any plan. We did everything wrong, but at the end of the day, we loved the neighborhood in which we lived.

  

01:12:13

And we worked, we loved showing it to guests. We loved what we did, and that got us through really difficult moments that got us through months where we weren’t making any income for the first year, my business partner and I were sleeping in the office. We had a nice queen size bed on one side and a couch on the other. And we would switch once a week. And that couch was so uncomfortable, but we were doing it all because we absolutely loved it. I remember one day the, the strangest people found their way to Costco Viejo. Back in those early days, we had in one week, Brad pit and Angelina Jolie wandering around our neighborhood, having a little chat and we had the prince of Stein. And I remember that because he, he ended up buying property in Panama, married to a Panamanian. Then he’s now fully integrated into this rural countryside called, but I remember meeting the prince at this very late hour, kind of a little bit drunk.

  

01:13:22

It was so unprofessional and so random and yet so cool. We were like riding our friends, home, telling, telling them that we were living the dream. So that sort of cobbled together, impromptu kind of hospitality. I wouldn’t endorse the unprofessional aspect of it, but it was so fun and it kept us on our toes, but it was also a disadvantage in the sense that we didn’t have that plan. So over the years we began building something that more resembled a business. And I do think that that’s the biggest advantage that folks have. Now you have tools like air DNA, which can give you access to an amazing amount of data where you’re purchase a property where you’d like secure management contract, times of the year. We didn’t access of that. Your predecessors didn’t have these tools and that should using them to soar.

  

01:14:22

And can you kinda walk through, so you, you, you had these properties that you were managing you, you know, and one of the things that I love listening to you, Matt, and what you do so well with when, in the, your stories with looking.com in that series is that you, you, you really highlight the story of the place and talk about, you know, almost like romanticize, like this is why you should stay here. This is, you know, and I think that’s maybe one of the big differences with maybe hosts now that are hosting a lot of properties. Is that, that story isn’t, isn’t there maybe as much, but, you know, with Vacation rentals before, you know, pre Airbnb pre you know, the, the mass hysteria, you really had to sell your properties a certain type of way. What, what were you doing during that time to be able to really promote your business and make sure that it was getting in front of the right, the right people that would wanna stay with you.

  

01:15:11

We were doing a lot of old fashioned repeat business, word of mouth. We were providing what now has perhaps become cliche and experience in the neighborhood. I try not to use that word experience just because when I hear it, my, my brain turns off, but it is really a new style of travel. And if you think Julian, when you go somewhere new and you’ve got a good friend who lives there, and that friend is gonna tell you where you should eat, and maybe what you should order off of that menu, that friend is gonna introduce you to someone in particular, who you would really appreciate. That friend is gonna give you a kind of guidance that a guidebook could never offer a hotel, even of the top notch hotels can’t really do at that kind of scale. Even something like the four seasons concierge is recommending the same restaurant in the same dish over and over and over again, hundreds of times to the point that it’s not really that special anymore.

  

01:16:21

So we were doing that kind of curation from the earliest days. Not because we really planned it just because that was all we knew that was all we did. We treated every guest, like they were a dear friend. And I think that’s become kind of the new luxury for travelers, especially. And I’m sure we’ll get into this world of post COVID 19. COVID-19 where you really wanna feel like you’re in good hands. You don’t wanna feel like someone’s just thrown a property up on Airbnb to cash in. I’ve had those experiences and they suck. You want someone to really take care of you. And that could mean in communication pre-booking that could mean having everything absolutely impeccable for the arrival that could mean having a digital welcome book. That includes all of the recommendations. It can mean a lot of different things, but there’s something that you can’t quite put a finger on about that kind of stay. I refer to it as the feeling of premium. It’s not necessarily high dollar amount. It’s just knowing that you are about to have a really great experience. And that’s something that I think has become more important now than ever before. And again, unfortunately, you can’t hack it if there’s no shortcuts for that kind of thing. And that’s actually, for those of us who like to offer those kinds of services, that’s a good thing. Nobody can replicate it.

  

01:17:47

And can you kinda walk us through, so you, you had these properties that you were managing, you scaled it up. What, what happened after, because you eventually shifted from the property management aspect and then moved more into the, the marketing and the education. So can you kind of talk about that transition?

  

01:18:05

Yeah, so I, I didn’t have any educational resources getting started. I had a bit of experience with websites. I was learning search engine optimization, right around had little bit of experience buildings, guidance in any of the marketing materials, but I am a fairly analytical minded guy. So I was kind of tracking what was working and what wasn’t working. And over the course of year, the years built up a pretty great little list of marketing tactics that were working really well on a simple level. We were reaching out to every guest both after they departed. And then about three to six months later. And just checking in and say, how are you doing? Would love to host you again. That was a little best practice that all of a sudden seemed to generate. Repeat guests seemed to generate referrals. Another example that we came up with Groupon, you mean, you know, that company, it was big back then.

  

01:19:12

And I was like, huh, why don’t we try a Groupon style promotion in the lowest month of the year? And we would send out a special offer to all of our former guests and saying, you can have $500 of credit at CU for only $250. Now set some basic guidelines when they can be redeemed and poof, our lowest season became a, a wonderful cash flow machine, sorry, our lowest month. So was building up these kind of best practices that were working. And then all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute. Wouldn’t other owners and managers love these. So I put them into the form of a PDF who was ugly as all get out. And I sent it to a couple of my friends who were doing something similar and they were like, this is great. This is really great. So I decided to experiment with the educational side of the space.

  

02:20:03

I wrote an ebook called how to boost. It was called boost occupancy. That’s what it was called. And I created four different websites, each catering to four different fields, Vacation rentals, bed and breakfast, hotels and resorts. Each of these one page landing page websites sold the exact same e-book with a different cover. Very Tim Ferris of me, I, I must have been reading four hour workweek back then. And I started advertising them using early days, Google AdWords, maybe three, $400 of AdWords per site. And one of those websites generated like an exponentially greater amount of conversions than the other. It was the Vacation Rental one. So I was like, OK, I’m gonna follow this past. And that was my first ebook. I started selling it for $97. I started hearing the little D on my I on my telephone when I was out for dinner or when I was sitting in bed. And I was like, okay, this is a business that I can get behind. And that was kinda the beginning of the, of VRM what started off as simply Vacation Rental marketing blog is now a full educational platform. And it was also the tail end, the beginning of the, of my management business, just because I only have so much brain power. And after a good 10 years of management, your listeners can’t see this, but I lost all hair oh, into a new project. And that kinda brings me here to where I am today.

  

02:21:46

You know, education it’s, it’s so important. And you know, what, what what’s super unique about you though, Matt’s, it’s not like you, you came out with a course and then, or came out with some program and then you completely like separated. Like there’s, there’s this distinction about you, which I think is really unique in that, like, you’re, you’re speaking at these professional conferences, you know, highly, you know, all these conferences you’re working with, like booking.com. What did you do to be able to get so plugged into the space and being plugged into that space? Are you seeing maybe like a, I don’t know, could, could you kinda shed some light on like, you know, being in the world of the professional Vacation Rental world, as opposed to where, you know, the world kind of left off on before the, the COVID 19.

  

02:22:34

Yeah. And, and I’ll, I’ll share you the perspective from a manager, which is what I was when I started doing this. I learned very quickly that explaining something is significantly more difficult than actually doing it. And it takes practice if you’re not good at it already, which very few people are that practice can take the form of repetition saying it to somebody a hundred times, eventually not unlike a comedian, you get the joke clean and right, as opposed to, you know, falling on flat. So the practice of, of repetition and explaining what these practices are also surrounding myself with a lot of other owners and managers who were as if not more innovative than I was, that was a huge step in it. And that’s something I would encourage everybody who’s listening, earmark a certain dollar amount this coming year, or whenever we’re allowed to enter the general population again, to one of these learning events.

 

02:23:38

In fact, you could do it on online. VRM a Vacation Rental management association is one of the larger organizations, but there’s also smaller ones surrounding yourself with other people who are doing it better than you is probably the best way through she osmosis begin adopting those practices and doing them yourself. When you’re starting your Vacation Rental business, you often feel kind like you’re off on your own little island. You go out for drinks with friends, and you’re just other Vacation Rental professionals. For me, me entirely new textured understanding of the business because my group on idea, for instance, I would share that with somebody, they would say, oh, that’s really great, but we can take that and do that a slightly different way. Or someone might take the repeat the, the guest email follow up and they say, oh, we’re gonna do that. But we send handwritten letters along with a little bottle of olive oil to remind them of their trip to Italy and in hearing more and more best practices.

  

02:24:50

I started to realize that there was a more comprehensive pattern that everybody was following. And so that’s kind of when I started articulating all of these things in the form of education, I realized that the byproduct of all of it, the frameworks that I was creating, the methodologies, the principles, the theories, I look at everything from a very academic standpoint. My mother is a cognitive scientist. She, I just heard the garage opening up here on our quarantine. She’s going out for a bike bike ride right now, shout out to her. But in looking at this from an academic standpoint, I realized that these, this advice was really sound and it was working and that everybody out there who was hearing it was not unlike me when I was first starting. And just Julian, you interact with lots of these knowers, get, get an idea. And it, that makes the job of educational guide, very easy, just present a really quality idea and encourage that person to iterate on it.

  

02:26:02

However they wish I just kept doing that over and over and over again on my blog, my newsletter, I’ve got my first speaking engagement opportunity, maybe like five years ago, it was with live res a kind, a startup Vacation Rental software back then now a big industry name. And at that first, when I stood up on stage, I realized that I was made for like it. And I got great feedback from people saying that it was such a, a wonderful educational experience. And there was more than just tips. It was like all kinds of weird things that I thought would be fun and no one had ever, ever seen anything like that before. So the speaking circuit thing is, again, a slow growth. You do it once. Well, you go back to that same event next year. Maybe you can increase your speaking fee a little bit.

  

02:26:56

You get approached by a new company. Maybe you can up your fee a little bit there too. And the big thing I learned on the speaking circuit is that the conference organizers really just want you to not suck. And it is actually bit of a crapshoot. There’s not a lot of speakers who do a great job. So once you prove you don’t suck, you have a pretty nice path forward. And it was through the speaking circuit through developing my thought leadership on my own website, on a platform like LinkedIn, great place for your listeners to begin practicing their own ideas. A lot of them are developing their own theories of hospitality in their head, but they never share it now is a great time. And LinkedIn is a great platform to begin sharing that kind of information that traction began earning the respect and the admiration of some of these larger companies.

  

02:27:58

And when you have a company who knows exactly what they want and you know exactly what you want, the Vacation Rental show was a great example. It started off as a sense of place. Season one was sponsored by that original live res property management software and a company called a bundle, which is still a wonderful company. They sell products to hotels, basically anything you have ever seen inside of a hotel room, a bundle sells it to them as the American hotel registry their parent company, but they also sell it in individual or piecemeal to Vacation Rental professionals. So a bundle live re sponsored that first season of the show. And that was when we had the stars aligned and the chance to approach booking, who was looking to build influence in the professional management community. And when you have to organizations that have aligned values, you throw out fun ideas and you see what works and that for the Vacation Rental, unfortunately filming right, is turned upside down.

  

02:29:09

Oh, so that, that, that show you, you guys were planning to continue on.

  

02:29:14

We are, we were still planning on filming. We had a full featured film documentary about the short term rental movement that we’re actually actively working on. Thankfully, we have a lot of the footage already for that. So a lot of that is editing, but yeah, our, all of our filming plans were simply put on pause due to this craziness. And hopefully when we get the chance to go back out there, we can tell the stories of how our colleagues begin to rebuild.

  

02:29:41

Yeah. You know, I, I recommend highly recommend anybody that you know, is, is a professional in this space. Go check out that show. You know, it’s just, so it’s like a Netflix documentary and it’s all about Vacation Rental. It’s, it’s, it’s so unique,

  

02:29:54

YouTube and Facebook, the Vacation Rental show, very Rental

  

03:30:01

think I That’s. that’s probably how I thought I was like Vacation Rental show. And then I was like, oh, there’s, there’s this guy named Matt, but no, it, you know, I, I want to highlight, you know, and that’s why I wanted to really also have you on, because you know, we’ve been getting a lot more guests on this show from different perspectives in the short term rental space. I don’t, I want people to understand that this is such a unique niche. And within this niche, you can have, you know, we, one of our previous guests was a, a marketer Natasha, and she talked about like Pinterest using Pinterest to be able to generate leads for her, her clients. And we we’ve had guests that are also, you know, they build websites and new met you you’re, you know, you’re just engrossed in the space for people that are interested in this. There’s just so many, so much opportunity. And I don’t want people to feel like it’s just limited to, you’re just the property manager. If you want to get into marketing, you can get into marketing. If you like building websites, if you like podcasting, whatever that is, there’s plenty of room in the space. And with that, where do you see kind of this world of Vacation Rental short to rentals, Matt with, with all, everything that’s happening

  

03:31:09

With the specifically from a marketing perspective or where the rentals fit in the future of travel.

  

03:31:13

Yeah. Where, where rentals fit and where, you know, the world is kind of shifting for Vacation rentals, cuz you came from, you know, a time where, you know, pre Airbnb pre the mass hysteria. But now we’ve, we’ve seen a lot of these larger companies like Expedia, you know, acquiring management companies. We’ve seen the Saunders, the lyrics, all of these companies moving in. Is there, have you noticed a shift from where, you know, Vacation Rental, Rental rentals maybe originally started to where they

  

03:31:40

Are now? Yeah. The first thing I like to tell people is don’t read any of those pundits or headlines about venture capital and what these gigantic corporations are because doing a, you can’t control it B it’s not sustainable. As we’re seeing plenty of those venture capital backed companies are either closing in this crazy time or significantly changing their policies. So I like to remind folks that if you’re you wanna gauge the sustainability of your business, how long you can last, how many market shifts and industry corrections you can sustain. That’s in an internal thing that is way less about your competition or any of these gigantic OTAs. It’s way more about the way that you operate. I have a concept that I like to call customer zero, which argues that every single guest should be treated as a VIP instead of crossing your fingers, that you do a good job with one of them and that they come back to visit you again.

  

03:32:46

Instead we should proactively cultivate those raving fans, looking at all of your customer service through the customer. Zero lens is a bit of a relief from people who think that they somehow had to compete with a gigantic corporation. I also use my phrase of limited edition a lot, which is a theory based on small batches, things that do not scale things that cannot be mass, things that are truly you and only you. And this is another gigantic weight off people’s shoulders in realizing that what really makes a business sustainable in this era post COVID is uniqueness and trust and all those buzz words that you hear. And you know, it, when you experience one of those businesses and you also know when you’re experiencing the opposite of a limited edition business, a commodity generic Vacation Rental, that’s not that different from extended stay. That all said, there’s gonna be a lot of damage that this pandemic causes in our space.

  

03:34:03

And I’m an eternal optimist. I look on the bright side all the time and I think it’s good to be an optimist, but it’s also important to recognize that there is gonna be some really difficult times for a lot of Vacation Rental Rental professionals and what any adversity has taught me in life is that taking a pause, hitting that reset button, reassessing, what do I have at my disposal right now? What are the resources that I can tap? What does make me unique? What are the things that are in my control, as opposed to all the things that are outside and making, hitting that reset button tends to generate some interesting side effects in the wake of crisis. We realize that we are capable of way more than we thought possible. I just spoke this morning with somebody who didn’t think that they had it in them to edit their own, to build and edit their own WordPress website.

  

03:35:06

But gosh, darn it. They did it in the past two weeks cuz nobody else was available and they didn’t have any extra funds. So we realize we’re capable of things that we didn’t once think possible, too. People and organizations come out of the woodwork to help. That’s kind like a nice comforting reminder that there are things out there that will just appear that you never really were thinking about before, but that help you through that difficult time and three. And I think this goes for any kind of adversity and I’d actually be curious for your take Julian, cause I know you have that sort of written into your, your bio story is that we gain an entirely new perspective on the things that we hold dear and understanding what you do appreciate is a really good thing. And I think our industry was going through a lot of hype. This will be a moment in which we are really brought down to earth and are really challenged to look inwards at what we can control, what we want from our businesses. Have you experienced a similar kinda reset or rethink about the way that listeners and yourself are looking at business?

  

03:36:25

Yeah. You know, I, a lot of listeners of the show, you know, even even reached out to me and started pointing out like, you know, Julian, you don’t seem like yourself lately. You know, you seem very negative, very pessimistic. You know, they, they commented about the Facebook groups and like, oh, you sound like one of the guys that are ranting in the Facebook groups. And, but yeah, it it’s, you know, during this time, you know, really it, it made me kind of take a pause. I think the mindset, you know, even when I first started, it was just like, I wanted to find out how other people were able to, you know, achieve financial freedom through short-term rentals. And you know, through that this, this podcast just kind of flourished, but you know, I don’t, I don’t think that it was just ever about the money.

  

03:37:08

I think it’s, you know, like, like what you say and what I, you know, what I love watching you about is the story behind each property, the story behind the people, you know, why people started these businesses in the first place? Was it just for the profit or was it because of something else that, you know, you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else that experience. And I think that shift now is definitely, you know, with all these companies going under, you know, taking these big, massive hits and a lot of hosts losing a lot of their properties or, you know, just having to drop off these, these units. I think that mindset shift like you, like you said, where, you know, we have to go back to, what’s the reason why we’re doing these things in the first place, you know, and if it was just for profit and it was just really just kind of a, you know, not considering that, you know, that customer zero, you know, those, those businesses are, are gonna take the biggest hit and those businesses that Airbnb loves and that, you know, Vacation rentals kind of stood up on, you know, those unique experiences where every customer was special.

  

03:38:11

I think those, those are definitely gonna be the ones that thrive. So I, you know, for me, it’s definitely hit the reset button. I’ve had to take a look at like, you know, what am I doing with, with the, with the show, what am I doing in, in my business, moving forward to, you know, make that a priority.

  

03:38:25

I have two things that people can do right now. Well, after they get list, stop listening to this in that category. One is, think about your absolute best guest that you’ve ever hosted your best client that maybe comes back year after year, refers people doesn’t haggle on price at all, compliment you brings in like new decorations to the process, to the property. In a lot of cases, they’ve become almost friends or family. Think about that guest and how you can begin cloning them. What can you, what kind of relationship building tactics can you do with other guests to replicate that individual? What that ends up resulting in, especially in a time of crisis where a lot of us have a little bit of time on our hands and don’t have any new bookings flowing through. What that will do is build up the kind of repeat business that gets you through the next crisis that hits perfect example, Bob Gardner of Casa, in Lamarque Italy, we actually featured him on the first season of sense of place.

  

03:39:38

He has something like a 75% repeat guest ratio. And that ratio of, of direct bookings to OTAs had been increasing approximately two to 5% year upon year. And what we realized with Bob was that if you keep charting this curve of a slight increase of ratio of direct bookings, whether it’s a repeat or a referral through your website versus OTA bookings, if you keep increasing that ratio a bit year upon year, eventually those curves cross and you have become more independent. And when Bob is ready to get started again, he has that base of loyal guests who will be so excited and ready to come and visit. The second thing that people can do is use that same customer zero prism. When looking at properties that they manage, there are certain properties that generate more money than others. There are certain properties that are more desirable.

  

04:40:40

There are certain properties that have crazy owners who drive you nuts. There are certain properties that require more maintenance. There are certain properties that have features that are more attractive than others. Identifying a bit of a list of priorities in your properties. What are the ones that are generating the most? What are the ones that are generating the least take this moment, this reset, as we said, this excuse really of a crisis of a, of a pandemic to part ways with those worst performing properties, because it wasn’t working for you or your guests. And a lot of people have trouble doing that, but now is there’s no better time to use this as a bit of a crutch and just say, look, Julian, it was Goodwill. It lasted, our business has taken a major hit in this. We’re gonna need to part ways. Here are a couple other management companies that we recommend and look to replace them or grow your fleet with properties that are similar to the ones that perform at the very top.

  

04:41:41

We did a fantastic podcast episode featuring a man called Jon Dean in who does something once a year called top grading. And it’s just that removing the worst properties and aiming to bring in new properties that can duplicate the best. This is the time for that kind of top grading exercise. And, and I do believe that looking at these as one-offs one property, one guest, and you do that again and again, you do not need a gazillion of these to succeed. You probably need like 50 or a hundred. So it’s a really easy step by step way to use this downtime, to tighten the bolts, improve the relationships with those existing resources that you have and be ready to come out of this on the other side, in a way that any crisis or pandemic that hits you are gonna be able to sustain that better than someone who, who hasn’t,

  

04:42:40

You know, Matt, do you, do you have any, any advice for the people because you know, one of the, one of the things is keeping that, you know, that customer zero, that avatar not only do we have to try to create an amazing experience for our guests, but like you said, you know, when we’re scaling this business, as you know, through the, the traditional management model, not only you, you have, you have your clients and you also have your guests, how, how can you keep a, a unique and really, you know, amazing experience while also trying to grow that into something more and try to make that into a brand that’s able to, to grow and flourish into, you know, something like, you know, like the, the Marriotts or the, the Hyatts, like keeping that same original reason why you started it and how you were able to differentiate yourself, but then also scale.

  

04:43:29

Yeah, that’s the million dollar question and I’ll just put it bluntly. I don’t think it can scale. I don’t think our Vacation Rental niche when done exceptionally well can scale past a couple hundred properties. There are a couple instances where I’ve seen it done close at one or 2000, but I don’t think all the things that we’ve been talking about today can scale broadly speaking. So that means we have to instead focus on what is a sweet spot of properties that make sense financially, that can deliver a, a lifestyle that we appreciate. You’re not gonna get rich from this business. I have never met anybody. Who’s getting rich in, in property management over the long haul, but I’ll tell you what I have met almost on a daily basis is people who have lifestyles that they love, who live in destinations, that they adore, who get to share those destinations with guests who appreciate them, who get to create memories with people that last a lifetime.

  

04:44:41

Like, I, I may be corny, but I’m just, I’m getting goosebumps even thinking about this is the future of business. You see all these biggest corporations and structures that we always thought were successful right now, crumbling. And you see those who are able to do things at an extremely high quality and are able to do it quickly. You see those people finding their way through this mess. So I would encourage folks to, and I’ll share with you the origins of the customer, zero story where I got this is because it’s a perfect example of how to go about your day to day business. I had heard about a man who made fried fish in the ghetto of Panama, which is like, if my neighborhood was dangerous was like more dangerous. But I heard about this guy who was frying fish, and it was the best fried fish in the world.

  

04:45:40

This is from like a reliable foodie friend. And I went and I met Juan and I was like, wow, it is, it was fried fish served out of like a, a garage. The hygiene, the sanitization was probably completely illegal, but the fish was absolutely remarkable. And I built up a great friendship with one go there almost every weekend, introducing new friends. And over the years, he began to get very popular. I’m not gonna say it was because of me. I think it was because he had made great, but he began to get featured in magazines. He began to get, you know, press and I was just enjoying watching him grow. And eventually he was contacted by the food network. No, sorry. The travel channel. They wanted to feature him as a food culinary, patrimony, a landmark of food in central America. And they wanted to bring their film crew.

  

04:46:42

And this was gonna become this huge banner project. And he was so excited. I was so excited was in morning was one. There like, was I are, where are they? And he said, bad news. They called this morning to cancel. And they’re deciding to feature Cecilia Cecilia. That’s like his main competition. And I was devastated. I was like, I couldn’t believe it. And he did not seem all that upset. And I was like, what’s up with this? How is it possible that I’m more upset about this missed opportunity that you’re? And he said, this is a getting back to the origins of the customer zero. He said, Matt, my only real goal with this thing is to make sure that everybody who experiences my fish thinks it’s spectacular thinks it’s the best they’ve ever had in their lives. That could be one person that could be like someone like you, who has gone off and told a ton of friends that could be 20 people, but the travel channel is not part of my success definition.

  

04:48:00

And I just love how it really brings everything down to earth into a singular action. Are you doing the work necessary that every guest can refer to that experience as world class that goes for your property owners? Are you using this opportunity to they’re updates that you’re doing at the house, maybe suggesting some alternative Rental strategies to get them to their income goals. Are you doing that with your guests? Are you getting lazy with guests and taking shortcuts? Are you missing the essence of customer zero? And I just think it’s a nice reminder that everything the economy right now is going back to those core relationships that is the new and I foreseeable future. So that’s just a nice reminder for anybody who’s listening that can totally build your little mini empire by taking things one step at a time.

  

04:49:04

I ne I never knew that I, what I would, I would get goosebumps from a fried fish story, but today, today it happened. I, I, I love that the, you know, there, there’s just, there’s just something so, so rich about that. And I think, you know, a lot of hosts during this whole, this whole hysteria where people were, you know, throwing up a lot of properties, a lot of people maybe missed out on, on the essence of what it is to run this. And when you said that it kinda made a clear kind of definition in my mind of these two types of properties. And, you know, when I think of a traditional Vacation Rental and a lot of the hosts that we’ve had on the show, you know, they’re in these unique destinations where they have these very experiential type properties, you know, their mindset, or they have like a farm stay or something like that, where it’s so different from the mindset.

  

04:49:52

When we think of like, like Saunder, or when we think of like VA Casa or one of these larger companies where a lot of hosts, they see that and they see the, the profit that they see, you know, the money that they’re able to bring in their expansion. And I really think that there maybe is a big difference in the, in the type of host, you know, either you’re either leaning on the left or leaning on the right, you know, but how can you, you know, how can you take what’s, you know, the essence of hosting and then move it into something that is experiential, I guess it really is finding out where, where do you want to be? And I think during that this time it’s like figuring out, you know, what what’s, what’s your main goal? Is it, is it to make a lot of money? Is it to, is it to, to grow exponentially or is it to be able to have the freedom, to be able to, you know, experience these things?

  

05:50:40

And I would just say that making a lot of money and growing exponentially, I don’t see that happen very often, much more frequently. I see an independent owner manager with a small family, or in some cases by themselves building a small profitable business. That really means something that has purpose and building a lifestyle that supports them, making enough money to buy the car that they wanted, but not plain. And I think that is a new kind of calibration in the post pandemic world that is very realistic. It’s something that we can all achieve. It’s and it’s kind of based on the low amount of risk it’s in my opinion, the future.

  

05:51:26

Awesome. And, and Matt, do, do you have any, any, any last words for anybody that, you know, you, you deal with you you’ve, you educate and you help a lot of hosts that are in this time, what are, what are some of the best things that hosts can be doing maybe right now to be able to, you know, maybe increase their booking. You, you have a lot of creative ways about how to be able to help posts, you know, succeed during this time. What, what are some of the best things that maybe you’ve heard from other members of your community or things that you’ve you’ve you’ve seen other hosts do that can help them generate more bookings?

  

05:52:03

Now’s an unprecedented time in our industry, because we all used to focus about generating new bookings as much as possible. And now you can’t generate any new bookings because nobody’s allowed to travel. There are some destinations where people are seeing an uptick because they drive to, or they’re secluded good for quarantine. But now one of the only times that I can ever remember, and I hope only be one of the first, only times that ever happens moving forward in which have to care of some of those housekeeping issues. Some of those tasks that were on the back burner, some of those projects that we knew we needed, but we always avoided because we either didn’t wanna do it, or we didn’t have the time. So here’s a question for anybody listening, what is a project? It could be big or small. It could be creating something yourself.

  

05:53:03

What is a project that you have always known your business needs, but that you haven’t actually ever pulled, pulled through and done now is the time to do that exact project. And there is no excuses. And again, as travel begins to pick back up again, you’re going become compromised again, and your focus is gonna be on generating new. So that’s one way of looking at it. Have you always thought about upgrading your property management, sly their properties manually do some demos with some property management companies out there. Take a look at our Keystone awards. From last year, we ranked some of the best property management softwares based on your size and needs and do a demo. A property management software is like the chassis of the car. And without it, you simply can’t build a modern day Vacation Rental Rental business. That’s one example. Maybe you have always talked about getting a brand makeover.

  

05:54:09

Maybe your logo looks like it was done in 1972. Maybe you need professional portrait photos, but maybe the photo you’re using on your listing was cropped from a bar mitzvah 10 years back, whatever the project is that you know you’ve to do, but haven’t actually done it. Now is your time to do that. Use the pandemic, your excuse. That’s one way of looking at it like to begin thinking a little bit more creatively. I see this kind of crisis of turning all of these structures that we were familiar with upside down as immense of immensely, full of opportunity and new paths that we weren’t aware of before. So beginning to think about what is my path forward marketing to drive from destinations versus flights. Maybe I do need to change my campaign around search engine optimization. We have a great listing site, independent self grader.

  

05:55:15

It’s a free tool, LSI dot VRM b.com that will walk you through the four stages of listing site, independence, marketing diversification. It starts off using all the listing sites at your disposal, both the big ones and the niche listing sites moves into building and actual brand about your business so that people can find you if they search for you independently. The third phase is nurturing former guests back in the form of newsletters, things like that and forth the most advanced stage of listing site independence, things like paid advertising, PR search engine optimization. I think taking that self greater and recognizing where you currently fall on that diversification map gives you an idea of the steps that are needed to get to where you want to go. Now is the time to work on these marketing initiatives. And if you’re not about plans and you don’t like doing things methodically, sit down, get out a pen and write a handwritten note to every guest that has ever stayed with you, doing nothing other than wishing them well during this crazy time and hoping to see them again soon, that is an immediate way to begin building back.

  

05:56:27

That kinda loyalty that is gonna sustain us.

  

05:56:31

Awesome. Well, thank, thank you so much, Matt, for, for taking the time. You know, it, it really is an honor to be able to have you on here and sure that we’ll, we’ll hear more of you in the future. Love to get you back on the show, what, you know, post post this pandemic to talk about some of the more different things that are happening in the Vacation Rental world, what, what’s the best way for someone to be able to reach out to you, Matt? I know you have a lot of different channels, but if someone did wanna be able to speak with you, what’s the best, best place.

  

05:56:57

My email is widely publicized Matt with two Ts at VRM b.com. I do read every single email and that’s the easiest way to get ahold of me. If your email is too crazy, it may take me a little while to get back to you to determine the right response, but I do read every email, take everybody seriously, and I’m looking to help this industry move forward.

  

05:57:19

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Matt. I’ll include everything that I, we talked about in this episode, in the show notes, and until next time, host nation, keep on hosting,

  

05:57:27

Keep up the good work. Julian,

  

05:57:30

Hope you host benefited from the show. If you found value, please go on over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.