Matt Landau:                    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 that economy right now is going back to those core relationships. That is the new rich, and I think it will be for 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.

Julian Sage:                       00:27                    This is episode number 62 of the short term rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed? Go to cohostit.com more information. Welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host Julian Sage. This is a show where I talked 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 that we all strive for. Five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy is. 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. Hey, what is going on?

Julian Sage:                       01:09                    I’m super excited to be back again with you this week. So today’s going to be the last day that you’re going to be able to get your tickets for veterans live. If you want to be able to hear myself and the 20 other amazing military veteran real estate experts speak on topics like mobile home park, investing, burrs, fixing flips, wholesaling, content creation, and so many other ways of being able to grow your real estate business. This is going to 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 of days ago was Memorial day. So if you did want to support veterans and you did want to support a veteran charities, our goal is to actually be able to purchase a home for a homeless veteran. And again, if anybody decides to purchase by going to shorttermsage.com/veteranslive2020 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.

Julian Sage:                       02:21                    Again, we’re just doing this to be able to help support veterans. As you all probably know, I am still active duty coast guard, 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 Landau. Matt is the founder of VRMB or the vacation rental marketing blog and the inner circle, which is an online training resource where he’s been helping hosts generate more bookings. Matt entered into the vacation rental space in the middle of 2006, pre-Airbnb, and owned and operated only luxury accommodation in Castco Viejo. This is a historic district in Panama city where Matt lived. Matt came into 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 as he 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.

Julian Sage:                       03:27                    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. 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’d like my show notes for this episode as well as all these success secrets, then go to shorttermsage.com/STR62. Or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, you can go to shorttermsage.com/shownotes. With all that being said on this week’s conversation, they welcome back host nation to another sort of short term rental success stories. In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Matt Landau. Matt is the founder of VRMB 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.

Julian Sage:                       04:24                    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 short term rental space. And really, I feel like when you first get into the spaceyou’re exposed to maybe some of the more popular people, some of the more like, you know, a short term 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 is so awesome as 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.

Julian Sage:                       05:04                    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 rentals.

Matt Landau:                    05:09                    Well, thank you for that great introduction. I’m smiling here ear to ear in my quarantine. What got me started in vacation. Rentals was a visit to the historic district of Panama city, Panama. It’s called Casco 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 ruin, but also with the community that lived there. It was this strange, diverse group of individuals had one thing in

Matt Landau:                    05:58                    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, a part of a fleet called Los Quatro Tulipanes, the four tulips. It was run by two guys from Holland, Paulus and Eric. They kind of opened up the gateway for me into the neighborhood. They introduced me to the right people. They pointed out where I shouldn’t walk to avoid getting, I robbed very helpful guidance and I really fell in love with this neighborhood and that weekend and fast forwards 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 rentals in the historic district, and I began just like everybody else from complete scratch doing everything the hard way.

Matt Landau:                    07:04                    So I think I’m very typical in that sense.

Julian Sage:                       07:05                    And how many properties was that? Did you initially pick up?

Matt Landau:                    07:09                    I started off with four. Thus Los Quatro, the four tulips. Dutch people love tulips, they love tulips. So that was kind of 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. When did you originally start this? What year was that? That was 2007. When I took over Tulipanes. Mmm. And this was really pre vacation rental mayhem. It was pre Airbnb. People were aware of what a self catered vacation 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 kind of accommodation like we are all familiar with right now.

Julian Sage:                       08:05                    You know, one of the things that, Mmm. You know, hosts that are coming into the space and you know, you’re, you’re, you’ve been in the space for quite a while and you’ve seen the shift in the Airbnb mayhem as you called it. But hosts that are coming into this 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. Okay. 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?

Matt Landau:                    08:35                    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.

Matt Landau:                    08:49                    Otherwise it’s just a charity. Mmm. 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 it was quick, easy cash. And in a lot of cases it was, I mean, you put up your property on Airbnb overnight, you’re accepting, okay. But that kind of quick set a Quickstart 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 enthusiasm in the hospitality side of it, which is a slow game, building real relationships with guests and with your community.

Matt Landau:                    09:58                    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 a 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 going to 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.

Julian Sage:                       10:28                    When I think of, 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 this whole new Airbnb, short term rental craze. You know, it’s where I came into this into it where I was thinking, Hey, you know, I can rent out my basement.

Julian Sage:                       10:49                    That I could pay for my mortgage. I mean, you’ve been doing this for quite a while. Where do you see the difference in hosts that are hosting now versus where you first started hosting? Were you going into it thinking like this is going to be a really big moneymaker. Or was there different types of intentions when you wanted to even start?

Matt Landau:                    11:08                    Well, first off, I’m very honored that you say, I’m old school. That’s also one of my favorite movies. Mmm. But I certainly went into this with no plan whatsoever. And I think that’s what folks we’re entering now have yeah. In spades. A plan, a plan to invest in, in getting it started. I 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 investment.

Matt Landau:                    11:59                    So I went in with the mistake of not having any plan. We did everything wrong, but at the end of the day, we love the neighborhood in which we lived and we worked, we loved showing it to guests. We love 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 stay 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 th the strangest people found their way to Casco Viejo back in those early days. We had in one week, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wandering around our neighborhood having a little chat and we had the Prince of Lichtenstein.

Matt Landau:                    13:03                    And I remember that because he ended up buying property in Panama, married to a Panamanian, then he’s now fully integrated into this rural countryside called Tennessee. But I remember meeting the Prince at this, I’m very late hour, kind of a little bit drunk. It was so unprofessional and so random and yet so cool when we were like riding our friends home, telling us 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 going to purchase a property where you’d like to secure a new management contract, what price you should be asking. What are the busy times of the year? We didn’t have access to any of that. Ah, so no, that

Matt Landau:                    14:16                    Your predecessors didn’t have these tools and that you should be using them to soar.

Julian Sage:                       14:22                    And can you kind of walk through. So you had these properties that you were managing, you know, and one of the things that I loved listening to you man, and what you do so well with your stories with booking.com and that series is that you, you, you really highlight the story of the place. And talk about, you know, almost like romanticized, 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 there maybe as much, but

Julian Sage:                       14:52                    Yeah, with vacation rentals before Airbnb pre the mass hysteria, you really had to sell your properties a certain type of way. 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 want to stay with you?

Matt Landau:                    15:10                    We were doing a lot of old fashioned repeat business, word of mouth. We were providing what now is perhaps become cliche and experience in the neighborhood. I try not to use that word experience just because when I hear it am I, 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 going to tell you where you should eat and maybe what you should order off of that menu that friend is going to introduce you to someone in particular that you would really appreciate, that friend is going to give you a kind of guidance that a guidebook could never offer a hotel.

Matt Landau:                    16:02                    Even 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 and the same dish over and over and over again, hundreds of times to the point that it’s not really that a special anymore. 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 a Covid-19. Mmm. Where you really want to feel like you’re in good hands. You don’t want to feel like someone’s just throwing a property up on Airbnb, cash in. I’ve had those experiences and they suck.

Matt Landau:                    16:56                    You want someone to really Mmm, take care of you. And that could mean in communication, pre booking, that could mean I’m 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 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.

Julian Sage:                       17:47                    And can you kind of walk us through, so you had these properties that you were managing, you scaled it up, what happened after, because you eventually shifted from the property management aspect and then move more into the the marketing and the education. So can you kind of talk about that transition?

Matt Landau:                    18:03                    Yeah. So I, I didn’t have any educational resources getting started. I had a bit of experience with websites. I was kind of learning search engine optimization right around 2006. I had a little bit of experience building websites, but really I had no guidance in any of the marketing materials. Mmm. 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 the years, built up a pretty great little list of marketing tactics that were working really well.

Matt Landau:                    18:45                    On a simple level. We were Mmm. 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? We’d love to host you again. That was a little best practice that all of a sudden seemed to generate repeat guests seem to generate referrals. Another example that we came up with Groupon, you know that company, it was big back then and I was like, huh, why don’t we try a group on 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 Cuatro Tulipanes for only $250 now set some basic guidelines when they can be redeemed and poof! Our lowest season became aye, a wonderful a cashflow machine, sorry, our lowest month.

Matt Landau:                    19:38                    So it was building up these kinds 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. It was ugly as I’ll get out. And I sent it to a couple of my friends who are 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. I wrote an ebook called how to boost. I was called boost occupancy. That’s what it’s 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 ebook with different cover. Very Tim of me. I must’ve been reading four hour work week back then.

Matt Landau:                    20:33                    And I started advertising them using early days, Google ad words, maybe three, $400 of ad words per site. And one of those websites generated like an exponentially greater, the amount of conversions than the other. It was the vacation rental one. So I was like, okay, I’m going to follow this path. And that was my first ebook. I started selling it for $97. I started hearing the little on my eye, 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 kind of the beginning of the growth of VRMB 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 end of my management business, just because I only have so much brain power and after a good 10 years of management, Mmm.

Matt Landau:                    21:31                    Or your listeners can’t see this, but I lost all my hair. Goodness, lost it all. It wears you down. So I was ready to move on and work into a new project and that kind of brings me here to where I am today.

Julian Sage:                       21:44                    Education is so important. And you know, what’s super unique about you though, Matt, is 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? Could you kind of shed some light on like Mmm. Being in the world of the professional vacation rental a world as opposed to where you know, the world kind of left off found before the covid-19.

Matt Landau:                    22:33                    Yeah, and I’ll, I’ll share you the perspectives 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, you can take the form of Mmm. 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 he’s listening earmark at a certain dollar amount this coming year or whenever.

Matt Landau:                    23:32                    We’re allowed to enter the general population again to one of these learning events. In fact, you could do it on online VRMA vacation rental management association is one of the larger, but there’s also smaller ones surrounding yourself with other people who are doing it better than you is probably the best way through Shiran osmosis to begin adopting those practices and doing them yourself. When you’re starting off your vacation rental business, you often feel kind of like you’re off on your own little Island. You go out for drinks with friends and you’re trying to explain with them to them what you’re doing. They just have no idea. So getting the chance to nerd out as I call it, and just talk shop with other vacation rental professionals for me gave me an entirely new textured understanding of the business because my group on idea, for instance, I would share that with somebody.

Matt Landau:                    24:28                    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 guest email follow up and they say, Oh, we’re going to do that. But we send handwritten letters along with a little bottle of olive oil to remind them of their trip to Italy. And then hearing more and more best practices. 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.

Matt Landau:                    25:25                    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, it was really sound and it was working. And to everybody out there who was hearing it was not unlike me when I was first starting and just hungry for this kind of tip. Julian, you interact with lots of these folks, you know that they are doers, they get get an idea and they run with it and that makes the job of educational guide very easy, just present a really quality idea and encourage that person to iterate on it 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 Rez of a kind of a startup vacation rental software back then.

Matt Landau:                    26:20                    Now a big industry, no name. And at that first event when I stood up on stage I realized that I was made for this. Like I loved it and I got great feedback from people saying that it was such an 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 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. You get approached by a new company, maybe you can up your feet 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.

Matt Landau:                    27:11                    And it is actually a bit of a crap shoot. 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. 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.

Matt Landau:                    28:07                    It started off as a sense of place. Season one was sponsored by that original live Rez property management software and a company called a bundle, which is still a wonderful company. They sell products two hotels, basically any thing 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. So vacation rental professionals. So a bundle live Rez 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 two organizations that have aligned values, you throw out fun ideas and you see what works. And that for us came in the form of the vacation rental show.

Matt Landau:                    29:01                    Unfortunately, we’re on pause. We’re filming right now because the world is turned upside down.

Julian Sage:                       29:10                    That show you guys were planning to continue on?

Matt Landau:                    29:13                    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. 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.

Julian Sage:                       29:40                    Yeah. You know, I recommend highly recommend anybody that you know is a professional in this space. Go check out that show. It’s like a Netflix documentary and it’s all about vacation rentals. It’s so unique.

Matt Landau:                    29:53                    Youtube and Facebook, the vacation rental show, very original name. Yeah.

Julian Sage:                       29:59                    Yeah. I think that’s probably how I thought it was like vacation rental show and then I was like, Oh, there’s this guy named Matt. But no, you know, I want to highlight, and that’s why I wanted to really also have you on, because you know, we’ve been getting a lot more guests on the show from different perspectives. In the short term mental 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, one of our previous guests was a marketer Natacha

Julian Sage:                       30:30                    And she talked about like Pinterest, using Pinterest to be able to generate leads for her clients. And we, we’ve had guests that are also you know, they build websites and you met you, 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, yeah. What do you see kind of this world of a vacation rental, short term rentals, Matt with, with all everything that’s happening

Matt Landau:                    31:08                    Specifically from a marketing perspective or where the rentals fit in the future of travel.

Julian Sage:                       31:13                    Yeah, where rentals fit and where, you know, the world is kind of shifting for vacation rentals cause you came from a time where, you know, pre Airbnb, pre the mass hysteria. But now we’ve seen a lot of these larger companies like Expedia acquiringmanagement companies. We’ve seen the Saunders lyrics, all of these companies moving in. Is there, have you noticed a shift from where vacation rentals maybe originally started to where they are now?

Matt Landau:                    31:39                    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 doing because 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.

Matt Landau:                    32:08                    So I like to remind folks that you want to gauge the sustainability of your business, how long you can last, how many market shifts and industry corrections you can sustained. That’s 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 customers zero, which argues that every single guest should be treated 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. 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 Mmm 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 produced, things that cannot be replicated, things that are truly you and only you and this is another gigantic weight off people’s shoulders.

Matt Landau:                    33:26                    And realizing that what really makes a business sustainable in this era post COVID is uniqueness and Mmm 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 a extended stay. That all said, there’s going to be a lot of damage that this pandemic causes in our space. And I’m an eternal optimist. I look on the bright side all the time and I think it’s good to be off an optimist. But it’s also important to recognize that there is going to be some really difficult times for a lot of vacation 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?

Matt Landau:                    34:35                    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 crazy hitting. That reset button tends to generate some interesting side effects in the wake of crisis. We realized 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 too, edit their own to build and edit their own WordPress website. But gosh darn it, they did it in the past two weeks cause nobody else was available and they didn’t have any extra funds. So we realized we’re capable of things that we didn’t once think possible too. People and organizations come out of the woodwork to help. It’s kind of 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 time.

Julian Sage:                       35:38                    And three, and I think this goes for any kind of adversity. And I actually be curious for your take, I know you have that sort of written into your your bio story is that we gain an entirely new perspective. The things that we hold dear. Yeah. 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, I 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 kind of reset? Rethink about the way that listeners and yourself are looking at business?

Julian Sage:                       36:24                    Yeah. You know, 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.

Julian Sage:                       36:33                    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 ranking in the Facebook groups. And but yeah, it’s, you know, during this time, you know, really, 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 achieve financial freedom through short term rentals. And you know, through that, that this, this podcast just kind of flourish. But, you know, I don’t, I don’t think that it was just ever about the money. I think it’s, you know, like what you say and what, you know, what I love watching you about is the story behind each property, the story behind the people.

Julian Sage:                       37:16                    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, 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 okay, just kind of a Mmm, okay. Not considering that, you know, that customer zero, you know, those, those businesses are going to 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. I think those, those are definitely gonna be the ones that survived. 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 my business moving forward to make that a priority.

Matt Landau:                    38:23                    I have two things that people can do right now. Well after they get list, stop listening to this. I’m category one is think about you’re absolutely best guests that you’ve ever hosted. Your best client that maybe comes back year after year refers people. It 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 too? 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 [inaudible] in Lemarce Italy. We actually featured him on the first season of sense of place.

Matt Landau:                    39:38                    Mmm. He has something like a 75% repeat guest ratio and that ratio of direct bookings, two OTAs have 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 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.

Matt Landau:                    40:40                    There are certain properties that have crazy owners who drives 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 good while it lasted. Our business has taken a major hit missed. We’re going to need to part ways. Here are a couple other management companies 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.

Matt Landau:                    41:41                    We did a fantastic podcast episode featuring a man called John Dean Provence who does something once a year called topgrading. And it’s just that moving 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 I do believe that looking at these as one offs, one property, one guest, and then you do that again and again. You do not need I guess zillion 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 too. 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 a pandemic that hits you are going to be able to sustain that better than someone who, who has it.

Julian Sage:                       42:40                    Okay. Do you, do you have any, any advice for the people? Because, you know, one of the, one of the things is keeping that customer zero, that avatar and 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 traditional management model, not only you have, you have your clients and you also have your guests, how can you keep yep. 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 grow and flourish into, you know, something like, you know, like the Marriotts or the Hyatts keeping that same original reason why you started it and how you were able to differentiate yourself but then also scale.

Matt Landau:                    43:29                    Yeah. That’s the million dollar question. Mmm. And I’ll just put it bluntly. I don’t think it can scale. I don’t think are vacation rental niche when done exceptionally well can scale past a couple of 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. Mmm. So that means we have to instead focus on what is a sweet spot of properties that makes sense financially that can deliver a lifestyle that we appreciate. You’re not going to get rich from this business. I have never met anybody is getting rich in property management over the long haul. But I’ll tell you what I have met almost on a daily basis. It’s his 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.

Matt Landau:                    44:36                    You get to create memories with people that lasts a lifetime. 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 because it’s a perfect example of how to go about your day to day business. I, I had heard about a man who made fried fish in the ghetto, loved, couldn’t do Panama, which is like if my neighborhood was dangerous, do this, like more dangerous.

Matt Landau:                    45:33                    But I heard about this guy who was frying fish and it was the best fried fish in the world. This is from a lack of a reliable foodie friend. And I went and I met one and I was like, wow, it is, it was fried fish, sir, that have like a garage. The hygiene, the sanitization was probably completely illegal. But the fish was absolutely remarkable. And I built up a great friendship with Juan. I go there almost every weekend introducing new friends and over the years he began to get very popular. Not going to say it was because of me, I think it was because he had made great fish, but he began to get featured in magazines. He began to get press and I was just enjoying watching him grow and eventually he was contacted by the food network, no, sorry, the travel channel.

Matt Landau:                    46:28                    They wanted to feature him as a food culinary patrimony, a landmark food in central America and they wanted to bring their film crew and this is going to become this huge banner project. And he was so excited. I was so excited. So I was going to go while in that morning when they were coming and I, I purchased the pack of beer, I was like 11:00 AM was walking, made it over it, the place and there was no one there. I was like, 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 like this? How is it possible that I’m more sad about this missed opportunity that you are?

Matt Landau:                    47:26                    And he said, getting back to 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. He 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 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 of the pandemic to reach out to them, ask them how they’re doing, update them on cleaning or deep claims that you’re doing at the house, maybe suggesting some alternative rental strategies to get them to there.

Matt Landau:                    48:30                    Income goals. Are you doing that with your guests? Are you getting lazy with guests and taking shortcuts? Are you Mmm. 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.

Julian Sage:                       49:02                    I never knew that I would, I would, I would get goosebumps from a fried fish story. But today, I love that the, 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.

Julian Sage:                       49:29                    When you said that it kinda made it 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 when we think of like, like Saunder or when we think of like the Casa or one of these larger companies where a lot of hosts, they see that and they see the profit and they see, you know, the money that they’re able to bring in their expansion. Mmm. And I really think that there maybe is a big difference in the team and the type of hosts, you know, either you’re either leaning on the left or leaning on the right.

Julian Sage:                       50:14                    Okay. 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? I think during this time it’s like figuring out, you know, what, what’s, what’s your main goal is, is it to make a lot of money? Is it’s, is to, to grow exponentially or is it to be able to have the freedom to be able to, you know, experience these things.

Matt Landau:                    50:38                    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. Mmm. And building a lifestyle, yeah.

Matt Landau:                    51:00                    Supports them, making enough money, two by 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 risks. It’s, in my opinion, the future.

Julian Sage:                       51:24                    Awesome. And Matt, 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 some of the best things that a host can be doing maybe right now to be able to, Mmm, you know, maybe increase their booking. You, you have a lot of creative ways about how to be able to help hosts you know, succeed during this time. What are some of the best things that maybe you’ve heard from other members of your community or things that you’ve seen other hosts do that can help them generate more bookings?

Matt Landau:                    52:02                    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. Mmm. There are some destinations where people are seeing an uptick because their drive to or because they’re secluded. Good for quarantine. But now is one of the only times that I can ever remember and I hope well only that’d be one of the first only times that ever happens moving forward in which we have to take care of some of those housekeeping issues. Some of those tasks that were on the back burners, some of those projects that we knew we needed, but we always avoided because we either didn’t want to do it or we didn’t have the time. So here’s a question for anybody listening. Well, what is a project?

Matt Landau:                    52:54                    It could be Mmm big or small. It could be creating something yourself. What is a project that you have always known your business needs but that you haven’t actually ever pulled a pulled through and done? Now is the time to do that exact project. There is no excuses. And again, as travel begins to pick back up again you’re going to be come CRA compromised again and your focus is going to be on generating new book. So that’s one way of looking at it. Have you always thought about upgrading your property management software? If anybody’s listening and trying to currently manage their properties manually using an Excel document, I officially command you to 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 software is based on your size and needs and do a demo.

Matt Landau:                    53:54                    A property management software is like the chassis of the car and without it, you simply can’t build a modern day vacation rental business. That’s one example. Maybe you have always talked about getting a brand Mmm. Makeover. Maybe your logo, it looks like it was done in 1972. Maybe you need professional portrait photos. They may be 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 needed to do but haven’t actually done it. Now is your time to do that. Use the pandemic as your excuse. That’s one way of looking at it. I then 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, okay. Immensely full of opportunity and new paths that we weren’t aware of before.

Matt Landau:                    54:57                    So beginning to think about what is my task 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. It’s a free tool, lsi.vrmb.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 an 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 up [inaudible]. I think taking that self grader and recognizing where you currently fall on that diversification map, it gives you an idea of the steps that are needed to get to where you want to go.

Matt Landau:                    56:03                    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, every guest that has ever stayed with you doing nothing other then wishing then well during this crazy time and hoping to see again soon, that is an immediate way to begin building back that kind of loyalty that is going to sustain us.

Julian Sage:                       56:30                    Awesome. Well thank you so much Matt, for taking the time. You know, it really is an honor to be able to have you on here and I’m sure that we’ll, we’ll hear more of you in the future. Love to get you back on the show. You know, post, post, suspend, spend and like to talk about some of the more different things that are happening in the vacation rental world.

Julian Sage:                       56:48                    What, what’s the best way for someone to be able to reach out to you? Man? I know you have a lot of different channels, but if someone did want to be able to speak with you, what’s the best way?

Matt Landau:                    56:55                    Yes, please. My email is widely publicized, Matt, with two T’s @vrmb.com I do read every single email. 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 then looking to help this industry moves forward.

Julian Sage:                       57:18                    Awesome. Well thank you so much Matt. I’ll include everything that we talked about in this episode, in the show notes, and until next time, host nation. Keep on hosting.

Matt Landau:                    57:26                    Keep up the good work. Julian.

Julian Sage:                       57:29                    Hope you hosts benefit 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 go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation.