Heads In Beds Show - How To Spend: $3k, $5k or $10k In Marketing Budget For Your Vacation Rental Company (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

In this episode Conrad and Paul break into 2026 with a two-part podcast series on what to spend if you have between $3k and $10k a month in marketing budget. Part two next week!Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteBook A Call With Us🚀 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 of Med Show presented by Build Up Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacational properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host, Paul. All right, Paul, happy new year. our first recording of 2026. What's going on, my friend? What's happening?

It feels good to be in a new year. We'll say that. We, with the way that we end last year, I think everybody, and we're not, I don't think it's just you and me, but I think everybody was just ready to be done with 2025. So, you know, we are. We're kicking off positive here. I am not old man yelling at the clouds yet. We'll see by the end of the episode. But how are you doing, I think, I think you're referring to the health crash landing that we had collectively in our house. some flu running through our house. Not to, well, we had the holidays and stuff, too,

but knocked a little dent in our recording schedules. So not great, but that's okay. I mean, look, at the end of the day, you never want to get sick. I will say, if I had to get sick during a holiday versus not during a holiday, there is a small upside to getting sick during a holiday because people don't expect you be working,

let's say, during Christmas. So as a result, you know, there wasn't as many, like, meetings and things I had to cancel and stuff like that. So I'm trying to look positively at it, but yeah, the flu B. I think you had a different flu. You had like flu A, didn't you? I had flu A.

Interesting. You had flu B. Oh, lucky, lucky. Yeah, it's just absolutely ripped through our houses. So a lot of illness coming around. But I'm feeling much better. I'm like 90% better. You know, voice still touch off and stuff, but I feel way better.

That's when you feel crappy and then you like, I think it was, I forget what day was. I think it was, it's currently Friday. We're recording this on Friday. I think it was like Tuesday where I'm like, okay, I've bottomed out and now I can feel myself climbing back up by Wednesday or Thursday. I'm just like, hey, I don't feel 100% but it's good to just like, you know, get that energy going instead of just feeling like I want to die right now, which is kind of how I felt on Christmas day and the day after.

I will admit I did when there was one video I really needed to make and I was not at a hundred percent and as soon as the people who needed to see it saw it it was deleted immediately it was a loom it was deleted immediately because I didn't want any record of that being around it was it was a it felt like one of those joke calls that you so someone calling in from work yeah no I was I was you know, some rough, I'm halfway through talking about the reporting, and I'm like, one second. So, yeah, it was, I'm ready to be on the back end. We're in good shape, having great conversations to start that you.

Absolutely. You know, it's so funny. You mentioned the back end of it. This is our first recording of 2026. I think the number one thing that people are starting with when they build their budget is a number. Like most people, you know, once they get their business in a little bit better shape, they say, okay, I'm going to start doing some more marketing.

We actually had a kickoff call today with this person's like, this is one of my 2026 goals. I want to figure out, you know, how to improve my marketing in these specific areas. So we're optimistic. We're going to get great results for that client. But he did. He had a number in mind. He had a kind of a specific number that he'd budgeted out. Now that number may change a little bit throughout the year as you have a slower period. Maybe you're spending a little bit less in marketing. Maybe during the busy months, you're going to have a little money to spend in advertising and marketing. But we kind of pick this idea of picking up three numbers, $3,000 a month total budget, $5,000 a month total budget, as kind of some examples. Now,

do we have clients that spend exactly $5,000 and exactly $10,000? Like, probably not. There's probably, again, some variability in there. But it's just kind of meant to be an idea of, all right, if we had each of these three numbers, so $3,000 and $10,000 a month, total budget, how would we chop it up? If we were giving advice to someone in our vacation rental world, how would we help

that person do that specific marketing? We're going to do our best to kind of cover some of the guest marketing ideas and the homeowner marketing ideas. And we're going to use general pricing, you know, maybe exactly the postcard doesn't cost you exactly 45 cents a piece or whatever, you know, but you got to do the own mouth on your side, depending on your local market.

We thought this was kind of a fun idea, maybe a little bit of longer episode. We might actually end up chopping this in two bits. But something that we can kind of look at and say, yeah, these are common numbers that we see in these kind of bands or ranges. And we want to talk through some ideas today of how we would spend that money,

how'd spend that budget. So kind of your thoughts on those three numbers, three, five, and ten, as kind of common ones that you see with, you know, kind of your typical smaller single market, you know, vacation rental management company, up to maybe a company that's,

you know, maybe 100 or 200 units kind of somewhere in that range. What are your kind of thoughts there? Yeah, I mean, I think that these are, these are budgets that you hope that people are able to carve out this type of budget for marketing there's i mean there's people that we started lower than this we've started higher than this um but i think these are these are these are numbers that when so like when someone just asks me to

give a general well how much would you spend these are kind of in that range of you know i i take all the considerations into market number of properties all these things this is kind of where I sit for the most part is in one of these buckets. So I think it is. I mean, I think there's, you know, what we're going to talk about is balancing between homeowner and the guest side of things. I think that's a big conversation when you're talking about, especially some of these smaller budgets, is how do you get the most bang for that buck?

What we know is that there are some channels that are more effective on being cost effective, but then again, what are you actually getting for results on the back end of that? So this is a fun conversation to kind of, I think, hopefully, direct some people into what we know is smart channels and really kind of maybe dissolving some of the ideas of why you don't want to always go at the cheapest option, why you don't want to go to the most expensive option. And again, just hopefully helping some people align with how you can get the most of those advertising dollars because it is. It's a lot. I mean, when we talk about $3,000 a month, $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month, that's $36,000 for the year, that's $60,000 for the year. And even, you know, I think it's easier to look at that monthly number than that annual figure because I think people get to that six month mark and they say, ooh, I am over budget, under budget. And again, we got seasonality.

We've got the ebbs and flows of how you should. should be spending that money as well. But it's a, this is a tough conversation for some people too. This is just, I mean, straight up, it's a not enjoyable conversation for people to tell people why they should be spending their money. Well, actually, that wasn't even in her outline. But you bring up a good point there because two thoughts I would have to that, as the owner of a small business, you know, when I think about spending a high volume of my revenue coming into my door every month on a specific activity or initiative, that's my profit a lot of the time. So if I choose to say, I'm going to go ahead and spend $5,000 a month on advertising. It often means that I'm not

paying myself that $5,000 a month, or I'm not putting it into reserves, you're kind of building a little bit better of a cash position in my company. So in most companies who deal with their small companies, you know, maybe we're dealing with a marketing person or someone who's kind of got some kind of chief marketing officer title. But a lot of times, like we're dealing with the owner of a business. And if I look at an owner of the small business in the eye and say, I want to spend $5,000 on advertising, again, that's likely coming out of his or her pocket where they can't pay themselves that salary or that additional revenue. And they might need that for their own personal reasons, right? Like, and you started the business to make money. Let's be

honest. Like, you didn't start the business and that you pay yourself 40, 50 grand a year. You started the business probably because you want to make $100,000, $300,000 a year, more personal income, right? Like, I'll be honest. That's why I started my business. Like, I felt I was very undercompensated in my last role. Once my business got some momentum and got going, I wanted to pay myself a good salary. I wanted to pay myself a lot of money. I thought that was the tradeoff, you know, for dealing with the headache of running my own small business. Otherwise, I just go work for someone else. And sure, I'd make a lot less, but, and I'd probably have a lot less stress and a lot less, you know, anxiety about it. So I think you bring a big point there, which is like,

I think there are people that we encounter that are almost like, um, timid with marketing and advertising costs. They, they don't, they literally, at your point, literally do not enjoy these conversations. They literally do not enjoy so many money on marketing advertising, even if I can show them with black and white proof in a spreadsheet exactly of how much dollars came in because of these efforts, they just don't like it. So I think like your mindset might be a first thing to check in on here. What are you comfortable spending? What have you done the math properly to have a good accounting and understanding of, hey, I'm putting this money into it. You know, what's the classic? I think it's like an ogle of V-Line or one of these old-school

ad guys. I know I'm wasting half my budget. And advertising, the problem is I don't know what half, you know, which half it is. That's, of course, a classic problem. So that's the thing, too, is like, I think some people, if they come from, like, maybe more of like an accounting or a finance world, they often over-require justification on marketing expenses to some degree. That's one part of it. The other piece is, they expect everything to just be, like, very predictable. Like, oh, we're going to put that $3,000 or $5,000 into this ad campaign this month, and we're going to guarantee we're going to get X, Y, Z out of it. And I'm like, I think we can get to that point, but it's typically after like many years of testing, you know, and like having a good

sense of like exactly when the market's going to go up and down. And to get to that level of predictability, you probably spent a lot of money along the way that didn't work well. Like, I'll just be honest. Like, as someone's coming to me their first time and they're saying, oh, my ads will be profitable right away. I'm like, I'll just get that idea out of your head right now. Like, some of the things we do will be profitable and will benefit tremendously right away from them. Other things. you're going to try right now. We're not going to work well. And that's okay. That's kind of part of the learning process. And yes, I have experienced. I've done this for 10 years. And I kind of

feel like I have a much better normal than, you know, or how much higher than normal batting average, if you will get into success quickly. But I'm like, every market's a little inventory sets a little different. Every challenge, every company has kind of its own little unique quirks to it. So I can't just say, oh, I copy and pasted what worked well over here in Florida. And I guarantee you it's going to work the exact same way in California or Texas or whatever the case may be. There will be similarities, but it's not going to be one for one. So I think you bring up a good point there about mindset to something well and i think it is i think if you're this is a conversation for for people who are spending like like like you mentioned they have done

they have put some investment in before because i would say if you do have someone who is jumping into advertising for the first time 3 000 probably even a little it's again it's going to be like pulling teeth potentially but 3 000 might be too much for them depending on unit count depending on a whole lot of other factors obviously but that might might be a big, a big pill to swallow there or too big a chunk to bite off initially. So it is. So that's where I think the number, I mean, these numbers that we're talking about, you are. You should be pretty well established here or looking to establish yourself in a bigger way.

Yeah. And one thing, too, I'll kind of put as a sidebar here again, is the idea of advertising, marketing expenses and what you consider in advertising and marketing expense. So for example, your hiring agency, it's a very predictable cost or a freelancer of some kind, maybe someone like Paul or someone like myself, right? You hire each of us individually, let's say to work on your account and you're paying Paul X, Y, Z per month. You're paying buildup bookings X, Y, Z per month. That's very predictable. But when you're hiring someone even part time, like you might have payroll taxes associated with it. You might have, you know,

what is that person doing? Is it 100% marketing? Are they doing some reservations work as well? We see that a lot in most of these kind of smaller mid-sized companies is they have someone who's kind of wearing multiple hats. I think that can be a good way to go about it if you would not otherwise have access to someone to work on your marketing. If you say, hey, reservationist Alyssa, we're going to have you work on this three days a week, and we're going to have you work on this two days a week. That could be a good way to get some initial momentum. But you probably take his or her salary, again, chop it into like different bits and kind of figure it out from there. All the software expenses, all the things that you might

have to then go pay and set up within your own company. Again, marketing expenses. So we gave examples here of like, let's say you go sign up for an HRF subscription and you're paying $100 or $2 a month or for SCM rush or whatever the case may be. Well, that's an expense. That's marketing expense, right? Obviously, the advertising dollars that you give to Google and meta would be very obviously advertising expenses or marketing expenses, but there's a lot of things there. So I think, you know, we're not accounting experts. Definitely don't pretend to be an accounting expert. So the other thing that I could cosplay as an expert app, but definitely not an accounting expert. But I think you do have to understand what you're fully loaded cost is of like

hiring someone and see if you go dig in the archives, you'll see an episode that we did about, we talked about hiring freelancers. We talked about hiring an agency and we talked about hiring in-house. That's probably worth a re-listen if you kind of want to think about that concept a little bit more because hiring in a house, there's a lot of pros to doing that, but it's also way more expensive, I think, than some people think. And I think they often overestimate that, oh, this person has 40 hours a week in my business. Certainly they're going to be able to do everything marketing-wise in my business. And, you know, again, we're talking out of our own book here, but like, generally speaking, that's not the case. It's very rare that you find someone, if you're paying them

$100,000 or your salary, that can actually be an expert in SEO and PPC and guest marketing in our marketing, all those things. And I say that as someone who, like, does not do everything inside of my own company. You know, I have individual specialists within my team that I essentially loan out to our clients. That's essentially the agency business model and say, hey, you want someone to create content for you? We're going to get Catherine to do that for you. That is all she does all day long is great content. She's now better at that than I was ever at doing it. So you're actually getting more of a specialist when you hire buildup and you have Catherine working on your content than if I were to do it or other someone else in my team.

Never mind like a very generalist marketing person who's never done it before, has no relevant experience in doing it and the quality of output that they get. So yeah, that's started as a commentary and then maybe ended more of a rant, you know, on what the business model actually is. But I do think that when you have these budgets that are starting to ascend, you think, oh, I'm going to automatically bring it in house. And I think that that is often something that people like to jump to a little bit too early in my experience. And then it's like they blow their whole budget on a person. And then it's like that person is actually not very successful because they don't have anything around him or her to help them. They don't have the

budget for an extra freelancer or individual consultant or small service within an agency. Maybe they're really bad at PPC. They're like, oh, I'll just hire someone to help me with that. But then they ran through the budget or they don't have enough. So I think, yeah, one thing at each these levels, I would say it's pretty hard to do is hire a full-time person. I think that's really challenging. It is. I mean, you know, we can just kind of jump right into that lowest tier, you know, the lean and mean budget. I mean, the philosophy we have here is that high intent, high ROI, focus on the bottom of the funnel and the people who are already looking for you. So I think generally we said rule of thumb breaking down the budget-wise.

About 70.30. Now, that's going to change depending on your goals and everything like that. But 70% of the budget going to guest side of things, 30% going to the homeowner side. So you want to go down on the guest marketing side and what you would be breaking down and how you'd you be breaking down that $2,000? Yeah. So if I had roughly that amount of budget to work within, I'm probably going to put roughly 1,000 or so into Google Ads, maybe a touch more than that. And I'm going to try to focus on, we kind of think of these. I talked about this a while ago was like the layers of how specific the search is, I actually start at the bottom and go up. So like property names, brand names, cabin names, you know, vacation home names, that's kind of like

my initial set of campaigns. Then after that, I'm going after a little bit more long tail stuff. So I might do, nowadays, I'd probably do a lot more PMAX built, actually, than I would do search campaign builds, just because that's more of a philosophy change you've seen with Google. But regardless, you're in good hands, I think if you do it either way. But it's doing a search for, you know, North Myrtle Beach, pet-friendly vacation homes. If you had a collection of those, that's kind of more my second layer. And then only if this, may make sense, which depending on your destination, you might be able to do some of these campaigns depending on your budget. Only then would I do something like a North Myrtle Beach Vacation Fentals campaign

last after I got the first two layers, you know, pretty well optimized are pretty much in good shape. So, again, that's kind of the stack that I would do with Google. And with that $1,000, my reasonable expectation from like a ROAS perspective, I better be getting at least five or six to one. That's kind of like kind of the break even of profitability, I would say, for most of our clients, what they tell us. Again, see your own expenses. If you're under margins, maybe that's perfectly acceptable for you. Maybe it's too low, depending on how your company's set up. But really, hopefully in a decent spot, within 90 days and then 120 days, I'm getting closer to 10 to one return on my investments. So spending $1,000 on Google ads, I better be getting

hopefully after some time closer to eight or nine or in a perfect world, maybe even $10,000 of gross booking revenue. And that'd be a collection of all the fees and the base rent that you're that you're including. We'll put taxes to the side. I don't consider taxes to be margin or part of that revenue amount. And then we could have a discussion or debate about what percent of that you're actually keeping. Again, that may depend on your company, your commissions, all those of things. But that's kind of like your initial starting point there. Then I think you've got to have the following kind of buckets in place on the guest side of things. We've got to have an email list of some kind. So, you know, doing one newsletter a month, I think is kind of the

bare bones minimum. I would also suggest someone like that has a welcome series kind of built out for all the new subscribers coming in. And you're probably going to be budgeting a few a few dollars a month for email marketing, whether you're hiring someone, again, probably at this stage probably is more of a freelancer. You probably don't have a lot of budget for agency here at this point. If you do, they're certainly not going to be doing everything. You might be doing one or two of these things, but not everything. And so you're probably going to need a few dollars a budget for email marketing because you're going to have to pay the software fees to something like a MailChimp or something like an email platform, and then you're going to have to

hire someone to go and do that on a monthly basis. Social, I think you can do some level of organic social here. It's mostly just you're going to be chipping in on creating the content, though. Like you're not going to have a budget to go get a video shoot done with a professional videographer at this price point. Like you're going to say, I'm getting a gimbal and I'm getting my iPhone and I'm shooting video content on my own. And then maybe you could, again, maybe you have a small freelance budget for doing some basic editing and stuff like that. And last thing I would say is like kind of what's like your local SEO or like optimizing around like Google My Business or some of the obvious things. So getting reviews, you know, doing some of those things that can kind of take

a portion of that budget. So I think at this level, you know, you're probably not going to have a massive budget for, you know, a really fancy website. You're probably going to be using like a template website that came with your PMS. You know, if we do a website investment, it's probably more of a one-time thing. It's not like a reoccurring expense every single month. And you're kind of focused on those things, right? GoogleS.O. You're Google My Business, getting more of use, email, I would say organic social to some degree, and maybe just paid social retargeting. Again, pretty small budget, but that would be like a reasonable starting point. You can kind of fit that into that number.

It's going to be tight. You're not going to have a massive budget there, but I think it gets you going and it gets you in motion. That'd be my take. What do you think on your side of things? I think that all makes a ton of sense. I mean, that's exactly, you know, I mean, how from the Google ads build to making sure you're hitting as many of those channels as you can.

And again, I think that for some, maybe you do. you choose between email or social or you choose between some you know one or the other or you're you're doing it in ways that are more cost effective there but i i like that breakdown a lot um you know looking at my thousand dollars of ads spend on on the owner side of things i think you know that non-negotiable that you're going to need to have is someplace to land that traffic so that owner-focused SEO having a landing page targeting property management in your area or STR regulations in your area, things that people are actually searching for and can help you find because, again, you're probably not going to do a whole lot of paid advertising on the

Google side of things and probably, while it is an option, that's probably not where the budget is best served right now. So, you know, direct mail is definitely something that on the owner's side, well, you know, pretty highly thought of in some markets. And it works. It's effective. if you're doing it consistently. So I would say you're not doing a whole big group of people. You're not doing the full list of however many properties are necessarily in your market total, but really getting hyper-targeted with that direct mail.

You know, I like to say the Dream 50, the Dream 100 when I'm talking to people because that is. That might be all you want regardless. But certainly those are the people that you're going to want to be willing to invest more in. So it is. So instead of sending a thousand postcards, sending 100 postcards, or sending a hundred of a more high value direct mail piece, like a handwritten note or something like that, postcards.

Those are something that it may reach people at a deeper level, it may speak to people at a stronger level, and knowing that on the owner's side that that relationship is a little more wine and dine and B2B type of communication, that may be what you want to do. So being more targeted with your direct mail, I think is certainly going to be important. And then, I mean, I can't tell you how many people while we were out of inventory, that was the conversation they had was I just know a lot of realtors. I know a lot of people in the space. I know a lot of those people that, you know, if you're doing some local networking, you're building in, you know, budgeting for coffee and lunches or going to some of these seminars or going to some chamber of commerce events or doing some things like that because, that is some of the most effective leads that you're going to get.

The difficulty, again, of nurturing that relationship with the homeowner is that it's not just often, it's not just a one-call close or one-click close or something like that. There's more marketing that needs to happen. So I do. I think that that's, you've got to have that willingness to schmooze a little bit. You have to have that willingness to invest and know that. you're probably not going to see this is where their instant return of booking coming in is great the instant return of revenue coming from your door from a deal you closed from a whole no it's it's difficult

it's hard to kind of trace that all the way through and i think brook does a great job of that but still it's hard like it's hard to really put a scalable number to say yes this exactly this percentage i'm going to make this much and i'm going to you can model it But we know the reality of retention and all these other things. So, yeah, I think that, you know, you're trying to do a little more grassroots effort on the homeowner side of things. Probably the only digital item you're going to do is making sure that you have presents, making sure you have the, whether it's a microsite, whether it's just a landing page, having somewhere that people can contact you specifically or, and I would say and actually learn more about your services, what differentiates you, that type of thing there. Well, it's almost like I thought about this a lot with like a lot of the content that we do and not to get too met about our own business and like how my business works, I guess I should

say. But I feel like part of it is just like increasing your service area for luck. Like that homeowner conversation that you just have, I think it's, you're not going to have enough volume. There's not enough repetition to know, hey, I did these 12 things and these automatically led to these four exact contracts that I'm signing. But if you're spending $3,000 a month on ads and you're only putting $1,000 a month into homeowner marketing, I think a lot of it is just like I'm increasing my service area for luck. There probably is a month where you sign four contracts and it's like how could I replicate that? But the truth is it's kind of just like this brand awareness thing you do over an extended period of time because it's like how well

known you are is what's going to get you those first 20, 30, 40 homeowner leads, right? And most importantly too, doing a great job. Like we didn't say that yet, but you spoke about Brooke a second ago. And I always believe like that's one thing he says in some of his presentations is like you have to do a great job, right? Like if you are the genuinely the fifth best property manager in a given area like it's almost right that you don't get any leads if we're being objective about her right like if you zoom out for a second who's excited to buy like the fifth best car brand who's excited to go to like the ninth best restaurant in your town like nobody like it does it do in a pinch yeah but like a homeowner is going to choose that they're going to choose the person that they think is the best

in your given area you have to prove that you were doing that and then talk about it a lot like you said meet the right people and all those kind of things and a lot of those are not like very linear a to be type of conversations where it's like yes this person I had one conversation with this realtor and they just gave me every lead after that. It's like, what's in it for the realtor dude? Like, how are they benefiting from that relationship? Like, I know how you benefit, but how does the realtor benefit from the referral relationship that you're talking about here? So just an example, I think, of kind of what you're saying there, which is like at this level, there's not like a predictable system where you can just put in X and get out Y. Like, it just doesn't

really exist. Like, can you do that with some level of awareness or like letting, getting quote-unquote getting the word out? Yeah, but like ultimately a lot of it is going to come down to your skill and your relationship building and kind of getting that initial. traction going and like make no mistake like this is hard like this is very hard work to get those first 50 owners there's a reason a lot of people you know die before they get that far up the mountain you know if we're doing an everest analogy for a second it's like you're trying to if you're trying to be the best property manager in a competitive market it's like you're climbing a big mountain like mount Everest and a lot of dead bodies don't make it along the way because it's like really challenging

to do that and depending on your location and your destination you may have a thousand reasons of why it's really hard to get new inventory like maybe you're in a market where there's only a certain number So in order for you to get a home, you essentially have to steal it from someone else or you have to convince a red by owner to give, you know, 20% of their income to you or something like that. Like that's really hard. That's hard to do. So, you know, I think people often underestimate, right, when you're small, like almost like how much of a disadvantage you're at to some degree, which is a tough pill to swallow. And it's not maybe great to hear that. But the same token, it's like, you have one thing maybe that the big guys don't have, which is hopefully like a real hunger and a desire and you have time. They probably don't have the same time you have because they're trying to figure out how to deal with the 400 homes that they currently have and keep them happy. If you have 40 and you're like, okay, I can handle this with myself and a small team. I'm going to figure out how to, you know, kind of get that momentum. So again, we're being someone philosophical here today as well as practical when it comes to the budget. Yeah. Yeah. Just something that we've seen. There is a different. The people who have the mindset of there is something different about them, they're not just trying to fall into the fold

of, well, I'm just like everybody here. I'm just like this. I'm just like that. When you're comparing yourself to that other competitor to this, to that, well, what leg are you standing? And so I do. I think there is that difference of people have the mindset of this is what sets me apart. I'm not going to let this lean, mean budget be a detriment to me because it also allows me to be more grassroots, to be more ground and pound, whatever that looks like. And some people will appreciate your message. You know, like inherited what you said there is this idea that you're going to reach out to somebody and you're going to say, hey, you're dealing with me. I own the company. Here's how we're going to work on your property together. Here's my experience. Here's the results I've gotten before. Here's a testimony from this. owner. By the way, all these things are free. Everything I just mentioned is. And here's the results that, you know, this couple got when they let me manage her cabin or their home or whatever the case may be. Those are all things that it's like, oh, okay, you are a little bit different. You're explaining to me how you're different. And I think it's like, and I believe me, I was guilty of this as well. When I was very small, I tried to pretend it was bigger than I was.

You know, I tried to, I didn't lie, but like I would, I pretended I was an agency when I was just more of a freelancer and I had no team member. I had no staff. I had nothing. And I tried to position myself like an agency. Worst thing I ever did. The best thing I did when I was smaller is like just be real with people and just be like, yep, like you're working with me directly. Here's my background. Here's my experience. Here's my knowledge. And that when I leaned into that was when I started signing a lot of clients, a lot of customers. And I was able to be like, wow, I'm really busy right now. I need to raise pricing. You know, and I kind of get that quality thing, which does go back to a little bit to this idea we talked about this before,

which is that a lot of property managers want to sign the best homes, the best inventory right away. Like they want to, they almost want to skip this like, I manage condos for a little while and get to the homes. I think you've got a lot of patience or a lot of money or a lot of, you know, reasons why a homeowner would choose you whose luxury, I think it can work. But I think how most people progress as they start with condos work the way up to small town homes. You know, they kind of have to like go up a ladder. You know, it's almost like they've got to like eat crap for a little while to like get to that next stage of the of the journey. And I think when you get that luxury home, it's like, it's going to stick with you too.

You know, like I think any luxury home that was easy to sign is probably going to be easy to lose as well. But when you get that home and do a great job for that homeowner and they're sticking with you, that's when you're building. you know strength on strength and you're getting the next one you get his neighbor or her neighbor you know you get the home one across the street you do you get great get great results with them you have a case study you can build off of that kind of stuff so yeah we we can move on but just kind of again some things that I've seen over the years of people just like wanting it to be more simple and predictable than it is like a lot of this is just like dirt in the fingernails like hard freaking work and a lot

of is like frankly struggling you know with trying to get the attention of the right people and coming up empty like month after month or week after week or having postcard after postcard that doesn't get replied to. And then it's kind of like these little moments or these little breakthrough opportunities of like, oh my gosh, I signed three homes this month. That's amazing. That's going to give me the cash to like kind of get to the next stage, which, you know, it's this $5,000 month stage. But anything else to add in that block or, you know, kind of that small, scrappy. I was going to say, I think in anything, in any investment you're making, I don't like laboring on the trough of disappointment because there is. The reality is that marketing doesn't

always immediately work. Like it does take time to build up. It is the consistency of I'll do one better. I'll say rarely. There's obviously. That's the most realistic way to say it. But I do. I think that that's, it's a real thing. Now, a trough of dish's appointment isn't 12 months long.

At some point, you do need to show results here. But what we talked about pre-show was there has to be a willingness to not just spend the 3,000, but to spend the 6,000, spend the 9,000, to spend the 12,000. Once you've said that you've devoted that monthly budget, it's not just for that month. It does have to be carried over, and there does have to be a continuation there. So I think that's just something to, I think the trough of disappointment, you feel it more at the lower levels, just because, again, those dollars mean more to the business probably at that point. But that doesn't mean that you're fighting for survival.

Exactly. Hey, guys, Conrad here. This ended up being a little bit of a longer one, so we're going to go ahead and split it into two parts. You'll catch part two next week where we'll finish the episode. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day. If you made it this far to the end of episode one, part one here, please go ahead and leave us a podcast review. Go to iTunes, Spotify.

We get a ton of downloads there. We appreciate it over here the most. Thanks so much. And we'll catch you next week for part two.