Heads In Beds Show - Building A Homeowner Communication Strategy To Retain And Attract More Inventory

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

In this episode Conrad and Paul talk about the methods that you can use to keep owner communications in check and onboard properties smoothly. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey��Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Heads and Beds show where we teach you how to get more properties, earn more revenue per property, and increase your occupancy. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. Good afternoon, Paul. How's it going today? I am doing fantastic. We are doing a little double duty today. Good afternoon Paul, how's it going today? I am doing fantastic.

We are doing a little double duty today. I am seeing just enough of you. I could see more. I could see more, but that would have to be on a golf course probably. Which we did just talk about. But how are you doing, sir? Yep, pretty good. Pretty good.

It's a nice day here. There's sort of home, I don't know what I would describe it, home improvements. I don't know, home changes going on right now. A bunk bed has been installed into the boys. So now they're gonna be having a bunk bed type situation going, they wanna watch movies up there, that sort of thing. But there's a little chaos.

So if you hear the banging and noise above me, it's probably because they're running around, they're acting like fools. School, honestly, can't come soon enough. So I think those boys need a little bit of structure in their lives. I don't know if what they're doing right now is necessarily great, but they're having a good time

It's fun to go play with them and they got these little radios They're like talking to each other in the radio So maybe a little bit of like positive brotherhood is forming because there's been a lot of animosity Maybe over the past few months don't touch me. I don't want to do that that sort of thing So we're hopefully we're trying to bridge some gaps here And it's a it's a it's a large bridge that needs to be built between those two at times to be honest with you We also just added a bunk bed into the household within the last month and a half for my youngest.

The other one already had a lofted bed. So now they can sleep together. They've always been sleepover guys, but now it's the same bed. And we're dealing with the same stuff, but I think this is very similarly bringing them closer together. So hopefully

you have the same experience and will be in great shape here. Yeah, the part that always puts my brain into a pretzel is that, you know, Madeline, my youngest my daughter will drop something, you know, my oldest will Oh, Madeline, did you drop something, pick it up handed to her this kind of stuff. So he's like a kind, caring person. And then his brother will like sneeze. He's like, why'd you sneeze on me? Like he starts yelling at me. I'm just like, dude, like, relax. Like he just gets he gets on edge. He's just push it. He know, you know, Liam knows how to push Julian's buttons. That's for that's for damn sure.

Like he knows exactly what what thing to say what thing to pick out where it's going to be a problem. So that does make it a little bit trickier to sort of navigate those waters. That's for sure. I love having two boys, but the younger brother is definitely a master of button pushing. And I think that's universal. I think when there are two brothers,

that is just a universal thing. Maybe just all two siblings all across the board, and maybe everybody just knows how to grind those gears. But oh yeah, I've heard that same type of, oh, how are you doing to a cousin or something? And then right, something benign? What are you doing? He's pulling the full name option of Karen James, man. Oh, you are not their big boy. So that's a good one. I've haven't seen that very often before. Yeah, I don't think I don't think Julian's done

them. But relationships are tough. I think that's kind of one thing. And there's a lot of good things come out of them. Homeowner relationships can be tough as well. So today, we've got an interesting topic. Paul, I think something that you've had a lot of firsthand, I guess, like exposure to maybe it's fair to say over the project that you have been involved with for some time there, building a homeowner communication strategy to retain and track more inventory. So maybe the obvious thing that we should state here is that we're not property managers, but we've seen inside of a lot of different property management companies. And some clients we work with have really excellent, awesome retention. Some clients

I've worked with, honestly, over the years seem to have horrible retention. And when I look at the metrics behind it, you know, I think a lot of it may come down to how that person was sold, how they entered the program, how I guess like much competition there is, you know, if you're in a competitive market and that homeowner, youowner, they're going to keep getting postcards, they're going to keep getting direct mail assets, they're going to keep getting those things maybe from their competition. I think it's just harder to keep those people off the scent forever unless you're really over-communicating and talking to that homeowner a lot about what you're doing. Here's our approach, here's everything we're doing all day to keep our company healthy and therefore,

keep your property inventory fully booked. there's a lot of pieces to go down here, we made a little bit of a list outline of things that we're going to talk about. So, you know, you've like I said, using this up close and personal a little bit more than me, maybe first talk about like, why does retention matter so much with respect to like, we talked a lot about marketing attracting new homeowners, but you got to keep the ones you have maybe start there. And then what are some things that come

to mind first as like the golden rule, if you will, of keeping those homeowners intact in the program? Yeah, I think I mean, the obvious benefit is you've invested a lot of time and resources, money, whatever that is, in bringing these people onto your program. And obviously they're a revenue driver for you, having them in there. So the clear obvious thing is, yeah,

you want to keep them on because you want them to continue to benefit. You want them to keep them on because you want them to continue to benefit. You want them to benefit your business. You want them to be benefited in the long run. Each timing is something that you touched on there, but it is so important. It's timing for when someone is interested in coming onto your program. You really have to be very exact, explicit with the communication you're doing.

I think everything always rolls back to communication, how you're communicating to your owners, how you're communicating effectively to your guests about your owners or vice versa there. I just think that communication is something that we take for granted more often than not. I think that's why there are so many CRM systems out there is that those are great customer relationship management tools and how do you manage that relationship by communicating effectively. So establishing those channels of communication early and often and making sure those expectations are set properly, you hit on that as well.

I think that's critical. Some of the things that we always struggled with when we talked to people who had churn, had a lot of churn within their inventory was that they had, I think a lot of that was early on, 2021, 2022. But it was people who had been sold in 2020, when the money was high and the expectations are going to be great. And all these things were going to be wonderful. And there was no there was no down times coming in the future at all. And I think when the only thing you're doing, we've said it often on

the show is talking about how we're going to make you more money, we're going to make you more doing, we've said it often on the show, is talking about how we're going to make you more money. We're going to make you more money. We're going to make you more money. At some point along the lines, that is not a mission. That is not a vision. That is not a value statement. That is not unique.

Everybody thinks they're going to make you more money. So much of that does deal with that communication that you do, whether it is through email, direct mail, phone, and all those things. But you really have to make sure that the communication lifeline is there for someone because ultimately at that point, once they're on your portfolio, you're in charge. You're in charge of their home. They're putting their trust in you to be in charge. And again, one of those trusting relationships, so important to have that communication. So I think I've said communication about 30 times now. I think hopefully that's clear that I think that's very important to keeping your owners on the

portfolio and bringing new owners on certainly too. But how do you see as you're balancing both the owner and the guest side of things? How do you see people kind of traversing that roadmap there? Yeah, well, I think you you nailed it correctly earlier when you said expectations, I think the thing that I would if there was a formula, maybe it's expectations over performance, there's your formula. So if you are meeting or exceeding expectations, based on the performance that they anticipated or that they wanted. So if you say revenue, revenue, revenue, and then you deliver more revenue than anybody else, the homeowner's gonna actually tolerate

a heck of a lot from you, right? Like, you know, it's really hard to get Paul on the phone, but he sends me a check bigger every month, the 20, 30, 40% more than the last property manager. And when I go to the properties in good condition, that's a pretty strong angle to be in, right? Now the question is, are you actually the best revenue manager in your market?

And you may be, you may not be, I don't know. I don't know everyone's listening. But that's hard to assume that, you know, be I don't know, I don't know, everyone's listening. But that's hard to assume that you know, when 10 companies are in the same Destin, Florida area that every single one of them is the best on revenue. That seems challenging, if not impossible, unless we're all getting the same rates, but properties are so different. So that's that would be even trickier there.

Anyways, yeah, there's one formula there. It's that if you're talking to your point, if you're talking revenue, revenue, revenue, then you got to deliver on that. And if you can't deliver on that, then maybe your messaging should not be around that. Maybe your messaging should be on, we're going to earn you the best revenue possible based on these parameters, property care, guest verification, guest screening, all those other things that maybe you can tie into your offer in your service. Because if you say revenue, revenue, revenue, and then you don't deliver, it's right for them to churn. Let's be honest. Let's be intellectually honest. I feel

like when we have a client that churns, not to get too mad about buildup, but I look at it and I go, was it our fault or not? I try to look at it very objectively. And some situations I look at and go, I don't really know what we could have done differently. And you and I have talked about this before. It's like, we did exactly what we said we were going to do. We communicated. We offered them this. We offered them A, B, C. They didn't take us up on the meetings. They didn't do this. They didn't do that. That's always tricky, right? Now, if we did something wrong, I also, I feel like I can be intellectually honest enough to admit it and be like, that email wasn't as good as it could have been.

That copy wasn't the best. You know, this came a little bit late. The writer was sick and that's why that was late. And then I look at it and go, yeah, we, that's how we improved our operations over time, significantly from let's say 2018, where I think I was probably my weak spot to today. It's so much stronger than it was back then, you know, because all these changes that we made so back to that kind of formula and those ideas That's kind of my thought process. Here's here's my take. I think it starts at the beginning when I say beginning I don't mean the contact form. I mean, that's part of it. Obviously, but once they say, okay Paul

You're my property manager. I'm gonna go ahead and list my one two three Main Street, you know house with you. I'm excited What's next? You know, I think a lot of property managers actually fall out of the gates It's like what the Olympics are on right now. It's like the gun goes off and then like no one runs, you know, to the next step or there's not a clear plan of attack. So we've actually had it's like in someone's head, like there's a process in someone's head of like, okay, we got to do an inspection or we got to do a review of the property. We've got to go do, you know, photos, we've got to get it ready for listing. Maybe there's new furniture needed. We got to go put smart locks in it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right long list of things to get the property ready. And I won't pretend to be an expert in all those things. And even most owners are not an expert in

every single thing. But there's a long list of things that I have to get done to go from, okay, I agree to list your my property with you to I've, my first guest is walking in the door to an awesome experience. There's a lot of steps between that. And I think some companies just do a bad job there. So it's sort of like, that's what I've seen, honestly, the clients that have the worst turns, I think they're onboarding and they themselves are not super organized. So I think that's probably the best place to start. How can I make my onboarding process fast, efficient, communicate

what needs to get done? And at times like letting them know how much is involved. I think some homeowners have no idea that you're going through and like counting the number of forks, like they may not realize that, but you probably are doing that. You know, if you're doing a proper inventory, you're going through and looking at every single item in the kitchen you're looking at the quantity of plates napkins or not napkins maybe not that far but sorry dishes all that kind of stuff right they may they may think just like oh it's ready for rent like it was rented before well maybe but i have to verify that and i i may have different standards than your old property manager or i may have different standards than you know you if

you were living in that property i think i shared that story before about a property i stayed in a while ago when I was visiting my grandfather in Massachusetts. And you could tell it was like someone's personal property that was not ever really meant to be a rental. And it was so funny that you could tell the details on the margins of that. So that's where I would start. Actually, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this onboarding process, exactly what you're

doing, how you communicate to that to them, and how do you organize it? Again, I'm big fans of project management system, like Basecamp is good, but we have clients that have used Asana, Monday, Trello, different stuff, but having a process and following, sticking to it and communicating that to the owner seems like a really solid first step to actually get the relationship started off

on the right foot, basically. I think that's, it's incredibly important. And I mean, you probably wouldn't be surprised, but I was surprised at how many people that are. I think part of it is that people fall into this business. That's the reality. People just all of a sudden, okay, I've got a home and then my friend told me that they wanted me

to manage their home, so I've got three homes now. I've got five homes. There is no process for how they've onboarded up to this point, but at some point along the lines, you do need to put that process together because if you are just kind of taking things as is, you're gonna miss something. Or you're gonna miss a maintenance item

or a housekeeping item or yeah, any of those pieces there along the lines. I just think that the expectation that someone says, I've seen people put it on landing pages. Okay, within 24 hours, you're gonna have your first, you'll be able to be booked on Airbnb or Verbal. Wow, that is aggressive. Are you sure that that home is right? I mean, is it clean? Is it this? Is it that? Yeah, I can't go down the checklist because I would want it to be much more in-depth of did we do our due diligence in making sure.

So many people add the design aspect, the interior design aspect to their process saying, okay, we can actually get more money, get more revenue coming in if we make these steps. But again, if we're not talking about that or if there is not a formal onboarding process, you are. You're leaving money on the table. You're leaving a better experience for your guests on the table. It just, all signs point to that not being the way to go. So I think even some of the larger companies that are onboarding maybe four or five homes a month, I'm sure if you ask them what their onboarding process is, they can give you a high level,

but can everybody get into the nitty gritty details of every box that gets checked? I hope the onboarding manager does, but that is. I think there's a reality of the, it's not the worst idea to have that spreadsheet, that checklist, and every time you're going through, bringing on a new property, you are physically checking that list off and handing it to that homeowner at the end

of it, or mailing it to him. I don't mean faxing it to him, whatever you want to do there. But giving them, that gives them the peace of mind to start. I'm starting off with that strong foundation. Like you guys checked all the boxes. Clearly, you think that I can be, that my property can be an effective home that can be rented for however much money. And I think that's one of those things that can give them the peace of mind up front with deliver on those expectations. And then you are going to have a longer, more successful partnership. So I think the pieces that kind of flow into it are like, two things can't be true at the same time. Like you can't be

I can't be both like, very easy to get ongoing, you know, get started with you like very little friction, like you said, bookings 24 hours, I just laugh at that. And you're the best property manager who knows all the details. Like those are those ideas are incongruent, they can't possibly be true at the same time. Unless for some reason, you have a team of 80 people like, what was that TV show where they like built the house in 24 hours or 48 hours or whatever you want to talk about extreme home makeover? Yeah, unless you've got that we're like 80 people roll up and they're like, I'm in the kitchen,

you're doing this, you're doing that, which of course seems a little bit ridiculous. I don't know, maybe maybe there's an idea for us there. Put a pin in that one. We'll come back to that one down the road. Could we get a vacation already in 48 hours if we had a team of like 100 people probably actually. Yeah, I think that's the key right is like, the one thing I feel like too sometimes is that some clients that I've worked with are in control of the homeowner relationship. They're kind of more in the driver's seat and they're collaborating. They're a pilot,

the homeowner is a co-pilot, right? And it's like, hey, here's where we're trying to go. We need each other. I need you, you need me. Let's get to the right spot. I need this navigation. I need this heading. You know, put on this music. Give me the combos. I love combos on a road trip. Best road trip food ever. Those are the things, right? It's more of that relationship. Other times, it feels like the homeowners in the driver's seat, the property manager is like, can we turn right here, please? And the person's like, no, I don't want to do that. That's a bad way to go. And they're not really actually in control of that relationship. And again, these are the properties, or property managers, excuse me, that we work with that I think seem to have worse turn rates is that they're not

almost, you know, not to get like, you know like quasi mental here, but it's like they're not confident in like their own offering at times or their own service. And so they tend to like be scared of the homeowner almost a little bit. Whereas like some clients that we have are like, here's the relationship, here's how it works. Here's the way that we wanna communicate together. Here's our expectations, here's our approach.

And if you don't fit, a lot of our best clients go, that's okay too. Like if you're not a fit for our program, that's fine. The funny part about those people we have that are picky is they end up with much better companies and healthier companies over time versus the people that just, you know, hungry, hungry hippo and they're just taking everything I think that's the dirty little secret of and in the admittedly you got there. There's three companies for sure in the space Venturi,, OwnerPoint, and SenseSquared that are banking

at least a little bit of their business on that. The fact that growth for growth's sake is always going to be what you wanna do. I think as those of us who have been in this space for a while now, that's just not a reality. It's, you can grow for growth's sake, and you can hit a number, and you can hit 500, or you can hit 300, you can hit 200. But is it the 200 properties that you want to keep? Is it the 200 homeowners

that you want to keep? Or do you want 150 really good owners and get rid of those 50 pains in the petoot? I think there's something to be said for that. And I think anytime on the owner side of things, you can hype up 100% retention. It's good. That's a good thing. If you've picked the right homeowners from the start, but the reality is, is that if you haven't picked some of the right homeowners from the start

and you did take on a couple of maybe they're good options and realize they're not the best option, then it's more beneficial for your business to cut ties with that owner, try to replace them or don't try to replace them. Again, what are your goals? What are your needs? Why do you have to balance what you're doing to get to the end of the month and make sure the books are in line? But there is certainly something to be said for. You can have a home that nets you $300,000 in booking revenue a year. And if it's not in a big novel, hopefully that's

a big number for everybody. If it's not, I need to talk to you people too. But that is just, they might not be worth that $300,000 in gross booking revenue. So you really want to be selective. Maybe that's the right word. maybe it's not. But you want to make sure that you're doing a deep enough dive and having, again, communicating effectively to make sure that there isn't like some unknown for these homeowners like, oh, they got a nasty streak. Oh, they're actually a little unethical there. And then again, some of the stuff you can peel back some of the stuff you're not going to be able to peel back, but you're going to learn it as you're working with these people and as you're communicating with these people. So I would say someone's going to show them your true colors from the

homeowner relationship side of things, believe them, because that is something that over time, that doesn't change. People don't change themselves. They're gonna continue to treat their partners, their property managers, the vendors, whatever it is, with the same level of respect, courtesy, all that good stuff. Well, I mentioned tools earlier, and I think that's one thing too, that I've noticed some of our larger clients doing.

I've seen two different methodologies kind of here with respect to, are we getting bigger? The owner or the co-founder of the company can't do it all anymore. I've seen two different methodologies kind of here with respect to are we getting bigger, you know, the owner or the co founder of the company can't do it all anymore. I've seen some where it's like, and this is kind of our approach, okay, you're assigned to person ABC, person ABC is our property manager for your particular home, along with x number of other homes, that may depend on, you know, how many properties you have in your program, that sort of thing. But I worked with a client in Hawaii for many years where I think they had like 100 properties per property manager. So that's a lot. I mean, they were all geographically centered.

So they had like one property manager per island. And I think it was on Oahu, they had two or three because that's where the majority of their inventory was. But that's hard, right? Like you have a hundred people assigned to you. And I always say this too, I've said this to people before in this business. If you have a hundred properties,

you most likely have 200 people that you have to deal with. Cause most of the time it's a husband, wife, do that's the most common situation. And at any moment, they're gonna, you know, either one could ask you questions, right? Depending on the relationship that you have. Now, it could be one person owns seven properties, it could be also the other way, a family could own one property, you know, 10 people could own one property, I've seen it before, it's not impossible. So I think knowing the volume of relationships and how who's assigned to them, I think is important. Like I said, that's kind of our approach. Okay, you've got this

person, they're assigned to you, you know is important. Like I said, that's kind of our approach. OK, you've got this person, they're assigned to you. You know, the owner is ultimately accountable. I'm ultimately accountable for the success of build up clients. But at the end of the day, you know, person ABC is responsible day to day with how that actual relationship is going. But giving that person, hey, here's our email. Here's your I can reach out. You know, we found a lot of success, you know, in the past,

we've used like cow and leaf for our booking systems. We find that to be really successful. I have some clients that have adopted that as well. We have a client out in San Diego that's adopting that. Hey, click here to book a link with me. I'll call you at a time that works best for you, which can be valuable if you have a lot of relationships to manage. You could set up an automated email, check in, that sort of thing to go out. So you could use some of these CRM tools or platforms to kind of hopefully do some heavy lifting for you. That's the point of the technology, right? Is to help you organize some

things, put things in place. And if you have 100 people emailing you, ask for a time that's so much easier just to reply back, okay, here's my calendar, like, find a time that works for you. And that way, I'll call you, you know, at a time that works most conveniently for you. I find that's a healthy way to kind of manage those relationships over time. The other thing I've seen is more of just like a shared inbox type solution. So I have one client that's like this where it's like, yeah, just email like PM or like property management at their domain.com. And it goes into a system, I'm just getting this right, called

front. So it's like a shared email inbox is how they do it. And then there's actually multiple people on their team because they have like different time zone coverages and things like that, where, you know, it's possible that Paul may answer you, it's possible I may answer you, it's possible someone else may answer you. So that's kind of how they have it structured. And what that system does very well is it like has notes in the in the sidebar and it says, okay, Paul owns this property and it shares a bunch of info there. So it's more of how they have it structured. And what that system does very well is it has notes in the sidebar and it says,

OK, Paul owns this property and shares a bunch of info there. So it's more of just like a general pooled resources type of thing. So if there's a lot of things going on, like multiple people can hop in. The other one is more of that like a side model of like, this is your property manager. They're responsible for your success. They're going to send you reports. They're going to if you have any questions, if you have property maintenance, things that are needed, talk to John or Jane Doe on our team, that sort of thing.

So I don't know if I have a strong lean there. I think it depends on your business model. My personal one maybe is the one that, like I said, we've done for our own business. So I kind of lean towards that model of this person is your point of contact. But I could see the appeal of, hey, just email us this email address and someone will answer you based on whatever criteria, whatever question you have. And having more of that shared model. I don't know if you've seen anything, other tools or other methodologies for approaching

that side of it. But those are two things that I've seen most commonly. I think I mean, that shared inbox is good. It depends on how active the team is. That's that's one of those things is, is if you've got, if you've got owners that are super active, or you have, I don't know, it's, this is the and this is the middle, the downside of not being on the ground floor. So you don't know how frequently some people are, how frequently do homeowners

reach out to the property managers. I've been lucky enough to work with some people who've worked on the ground floor there. And it is sometimes the communication is the main issue for them, but sometimes it's just, it's communicating with those vendors and how are you making sure that those communications are taking place effectively as well. Any time you can put more people on, you want to reduce all those single points of failure whenever you can. If there's one person attached to it, I always feel like, yeah, at some point along the lines, they're going to have something happen. An event is going to come up. They're going to have a baby. They're going to, you know, they're gonna have a baby. They're gonna go on vacation.

They're gonna, someone's gonna die in their lives. Something like that is going to happen. So, you know, having something like a front or a shared inbox or, or even using multi-users in a CRM to be able to cover that. I think that's always so critical. And, and again, different teams aren't going to be maybe, you be, maybe that's a part-time resource, maybe that's an offshore resource while you're growing the business or maybe you're finding a solution there. But I do think as much as you can, giving a lot of people access there and then

on the other side of that, making sure people are trained and equipped to answer those questions. You can't just put someone on a support line and say, hey, this is what's going to happen. I have no idea what you're talking about. Ultimately, you're going back up to a business owner or the onsite property manager, or whatever that is anyway. So I think that that's part of it as well as making sure everybody is equipped to take care of your guests and your homeowners and kind of doing some cross-training there when you can to ensure that you're not so heavily siloed.

Because I do, I think that if operations are big enough, they do usually silo. Owner side over here, guest side over here. You're still running a business and effectively you need to communicate effectively to both of these groups and you don't necessarily need to communicate effectively to both of these groups. And you don't necessarily need to do it differently. It's just a matter of making sure that you're supporting and representing the brand and representing the company in the most effective way. No, no, I think that's well said. I've got some other things here. We'll pick up some

odds and ends that we didn't get to so far. I think they got timing of things. We kind of touched on earlier with with the onboarding process. But we started sharing this. It typically takes two weeks for this process to occur. It typically takes 10 days for this process to occur. Hey, we're onboarding this property on August 1 is the time we record this. I know you're listening a little bit later.

Typically, our photographer heads it out there in the next 10 to 14 days based on his availability. Or maybe three days. I don't know. It's going gonna depend on your thing. But like, sharing the updates of like, here's how long this expects. And oh, by the way, the secret is you add in 20% buffer time, right? If it really takes three days, you put five days in there. That's sort of the secret name of the game. You know, it's always that you estimate a little more time than you actually think, oh, good news, you know, Paul, I've got your photos back ahead of schedule.

And then they think again, cause they were aligned under the expectation that photos would take 10 days. When they get them back in eight days, they're like, that's awesome. But if you say nothing, and then they get the photos eight days later, it took eight days for you guys send me photos, right? Like what a difference.

And just it's all about that communication. Like you said, it's all about the expectations. That's a huge part of it. So under promise. Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent, right? Like just a classic time and time tested thing that always works.

When do you pay? So that's an interesting thing. I have a lot of clients who say they pay quicker or they're able to pay Faster when the rent comes in or maybe they because they do more direct bookings. They get the money quicker They can then hold that neskro or do that side of things. I'm not an accountant I don't know But hey if I'm a homeowner homeowner if I had a property and I was leaving it with a vacational manager That'd be my first question. All right, how does it work? Like when you guys get the payment? When do I get my portion? How long does that take? And of course, I'd want the money as soon as possible. You may want to hold onto the

money not as long as possible, but you might just want to hold on to make sure everything's okay. There's not like a refund request or other sort of issues. Obviously, that can be complicated. If it's not in your control, cough cough getting an Airbnb refund, for example. But that's maybe a different topic for a different time. The last thing that I want to spend a few minutes on before we wrap here is how much one to many messaging or communication can you do? So this is something that I do have a little bit more direct experience with because we are running

some of these for our clients. So many of our clients will have like quarterly, we have one client that's monthly, but that's not super common. Monthly newsletter that goes out to every owner. And I think it actually, it takes them a little time to put together maybe a few hours, but I think long-term,

it saves them so much time to be able to say like, here's my summary of like, here's how Q3 went, here's how Q4 went, here's how Q2 went of this year. And he has at times a video, at times it's like text explaining, Hey, here's what we saw, here's the demand. It's written in kind of a simple way. You kind of scan it. You don't need to like read every word, but it's a good way to be like, okay,

the average market is down by this percentage. I think he refers to typically key data dashboard inventory, he feels like that's most accurate as market, I agree in this case. Although Erdi and I could be a good way, a good source to check to. But yeah, so he's kind of like, here's everything that's happening in the market. Here's what I'm seeing. Here's the good. Here's the bad. Usually, maybe there's, you know, here's the ugly, you know, they had

hurricane a while ago. That was ugly. He's like, yeah, these numbers are horrible. Because like, obviously, there's a hurricane that made it hard to get people to come here for the weeks after, you know, that particular thing hit. So I think that that one to many messaging style is underutilized by most property managers. They're kind of relying on, well, Paul will reach out eventually, right?

And then I'll kind of, you know, then I'll reach out to Paul at that moment. Whereas if you sent that monthly or quarterly newsletter to him and said, hey, here's everything I'm seeing going on, a good chunk owners may go, oh, awesome, there's my update. I don't need to, you know, I don't have any questions. That answers the questions I would have and that can save you a lot of time.

So I think it's being efficient, being effective and that one to many like newsletter style, including a video, having some of those things, I think is underutilized in our space. I don't know if you've seen that as well on, I was some of your previous experience. Yeah, I think the, on the guest side of things in the space where we're more proactive,

I think because we have to be, we have to be proactive in our messaging and our marketing to drive the bookings themselves. I think on the owner side, it's just so much more reactive. We're going to kind of let it go. And it is. That's where that newsletter is an awesome plan and probably a lot more people should be doing that. But we are. We're waiting for that reach out from the

owner as opposed to proactively giving them. Yeah, maybe it's a quarterly update, maybe it's a monthly update. However you can do that and get the size of your portfolio is also going to dictate how easy it is to do that one to many messaging. But I think especially when you're in the we'll say small to midsize. So let's say 15 to 50 homes. I think as much as you can, you should be proactive, getting ahead of any communication. I mean, communicating good things that are happening in the area. You laid it out there really well, but it's giving them that peace of mind that you're looking at this in a very analytical way, if that's what they're looking at. You're looking at this in a very business friendly way. You're looking at this as these

are the most important people that you're communicating with. The owners are going to get that warm fuzzy and maybe that's enough to keep them around. Maybe it won't be, but it's better than the reactive communication of just responding to their needs, which you could maybe be proactively taking care of their needs, you know, ahead of that as well. So it really adds to that retention layer. And I think you've really identified, you know, the ways that it should be done more effectively,

because yeah, if you're just doing one-to-one owner statements, giving them this number, giving them this, then yeah, the only reach out you're going to get is probably, well, why is my owner statement not giving me the number that I want? No. I mean, communicate other than just how much they're making, and then they will be concerned with some of the other pieces of the professional property management experience. If that's the only communication they get is, okay,

just taking a look in the portal or getting that paycheck coming in, getting that, that booking check coming in, that revenue check coming in, that's all they're going to focus on. So I think that's just, you're setting up a good baseline of the relationship and the partnership that you're having with that homeowner when you are trying to personalize that message and that just give them the business operations stuff. Yeah, I've got I have a client who does a lot of stuff with breezeway and long story short, he cut his homeowner questions by like half or less by just including a list of everything that they were doing in the property.

So it wasn't even being charged for but it was like when we do an inspection, we checked XYZ. Here's the photos. Here's the proof. We reviewed the clean. Here's what we saw. Oh, man, like that little thing broke, just fixed it. You know, you had something in this contract about under 50 bucks, they just fix it and they, you know, they would just do that while they're there. No additional charges, that sort of thing. And the homeowners were like, oh, like, I don't

even, I wouldn't even know about this. And I've heard that before, you know, clients saying that, oh, the homeowners don't even know what we do for them. Well, like, then tell them, you know, tell them what you're doing for them. Articulate, explain it to them. You them. We've done the same thing, right? With link building, we've exposed our air stable database. We had to make a link for every single client. Hey, that's present now in Basecamp. Hey, click here. You can see that if you want to see it. And that's super valuable just for people to be able to check in, get a little notice, get a little notification, that sort of thing. So you are inviting more communication, but I think that proactiveness will let you find the people that you're really going to be able to help the best. And I guess that's kind of the name of the game. You know,

the one thing I didn't want to interrupt you at the beginning is that people in the industry will often use this idea that like a homeowner will stay for 10 years, you know, as a basis for some of the acquisition methodologies. Well, if all your numbers on homeowner acquisition, which is very expensive, as you know, as you know, better than almost anybody, the clicks are expensive on Google ads, the postcards are expensive to send out. There's no doubt that you can make a lot of money doing it. But the one thing that you and I picked out before is that you spend all the money right away,

you sign the property, but then the money comes back in small chunks. So you put out a thousand dollars, you'll get that thousand dollars back, but it takes many, many, many months or many years. But the key linchpin in that whole conversation is that you gotta keep that homeowner signed. If they bolt after six months, if they bolt after a year,

none of your calculations add up with respect to cost per acquisition versus the lifetime value of that customer. So the only way for any of those numbers to work out, the only way where it's valuable to have inventory is to keep it on that program, the best of your ability. Of course, make sure they're a good fit. Of course, you make sure you're delivering for them.

All those pieces still apply. But I think, yeah, there's probably a lot of techniques and tactics that can be employed to help boost retention. And retention is kind of the name of the game, I think, in this business. And the clients we have that, you know, like you were talking about those 100% retention rates, we have clients that have talked about that before, my take on that is that maybe you're maybe you're too, you know, maybe you've actually tilted the scale too far, believe it or not, right? Like maybe you're, you're such a good value that you're actually leaving a lot of money on the table, potentially, we have a client who said

that to me before. And like, you're probably charging like value that you're actually leaving a lot of money on the table, potentially. We have a client who said that to me before. And I'm like, you're probably charging too low of a commission or not doing enough fees if literally no one's ever leaving. Maybe there's some balance in there, but I suppose it depends on how you approach things. So I'm not saying that's right or wrong. But yeah, some turn I think can occur in a healthy way, a normal way in the business. Other things may take a little bit more time to sort through. So I know that's roughly our time for today. Mr. Manzie, all good. We can put a bow on this one. Anything else you want to tie in there before we depart for today? Or is that a good communication of us here about homeowner communication? I think we I think we did our due diligence on homeowner communication and probably hop into homeowner stuff again in the

future, not so distant future. But yeah, I think we put a bow on it. I think we do. Awesome. Well, all good. If you made it this far, then we super duper appreciate reviews. That's one way you can communicate with us. It'll put a smile on our face. Head to your podcast app at choice, iTunes, Spotify, or where we get the most listens. We appreciate those the most, but any review we'll take.

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