Heads In Beds Show - Multiple Vacation Rental Markets? It's Super Hard: And Here's Why....

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

In this episode Conrad and Paul break down why targeting many markets at the same time is HARD (but not impossible) and explaining why this can be a harder path to success. 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 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, we're live. What is happening?

give us the report from the frozen tundra what's going on up there yeah man we're both battling the cold snap i think this is like you you being in the 50s is nothing to write home about oh yeah you ticked over 50 i am on the warm side of my day i told you and we are at uh in the teens um it's going to get to that minus number here and then then significantly it's going to stay there all weekend. So yeah, I'm looking, it's a white Christmas. Let's paint it with a pretty brush here and say, we're going to have a white Christmas because it's going to be so cold. There's no way we can get rid of all the snow. How are you doing, sir? Yeah, yeah, doing good. Not, not that cold, but canceled the tea time. I didn't even make a tea time last week, to be honest with you, but would not

have been able to go out there. It was in the 30s freezing. I have my bar of temperature. I think Saturday will be the thread the needle. I'm looking at the forecast here right now by the time of 8.28's my tea time. It'll be 45 degrees. That's kind of my floor of like acceptability. And by the time I finish, it will be 60, maybe 61. So we'll take it. We'll take it. So like to what we said earlier before we hit record, there'll be but a 70 degree temperature differential. So I'll send you a picture of me up 18 and be like, you know, in my, in my pants and my slight light jacket and be like, I'm all right. You'd be right too. I appreciate that. I'm going to need it. It's going to be cold. You're right. How does that work in your house?

Like, what objects do you decide to burn in the fireplace? Like, do you take a chair, chuck it in there, like a table, like old newspapers, like, just to keep warm? I have some, I have some things that if the need arises, there's a one of our neighbors took down their fence. So there's definitely a few fence posts that are that are in back that sit by the fight. We have a fire pit back too. That it's just like, just in case, you never know. We might need to bring those in at some point here. I just to dry them, but you can tell my fire burning experience is pretty minimal at this point.

but like they leave them somewhere and they dry for a while or is my memory off there it's i mean these are dry yeah these are dry enough post they're they're dry enough that when i will i mean it's it's it's it's like uh flint it goes pretty quick here so um it's something that probably the guy who built their other fence should have taken back with him but he left me a few just to be able to you know tack on to some of my my post so it's yeah we've got some some some fuel if we need to get to that fire, but please, please don't get to that fire point here. So that's up. It should be good. You know, it's good to have a backup plan, Paul. And I think some people think when they're building their vacational business that having multiple markets as a backup plan. But we have

a kind of fun, shorter ones today where we're not really going to make that case. We're going to make the case maybe that this is the opposite problem. We think that building multiple markets together is actually one of the hardest things you can do. By the way, important context here. Doesn't mean you can't do it. It's one of the hardest things you can do. I think when we were doing our outline, we worried that people might misinterpret that. So I'm getting out of that. that initially. So, well, you've seen, you know, hundreds of companies at this point, as have I. And most of the time, what we see is that there's a vacation rental manager in a single market. We could also say like a region to some degree. Sometimes there's markets don't

have super clean lines, but they're in a region. They're in the given area. And they try to double down, triple down in that area, get as much inventory, get as many bookings as they can in that area and kind of become the master there. But I would say more and more recently, I would say like over the last year or two, I've seen the rise of kind of the, I've got seven in the Poconos and I've about four in Scottsdale. And I'm going to be growing both these markets simultaneously. Both great markets, by the way. Just really challenging to do, I think, simultaneously, particularly when you're not large.

So we're going to kind of, if anything, this will be like we record some of these often where I know you do the same thing. These are reference episodes where you have a conversation and then you send it over to someone and you say, okay, like, I think there's some challenges here. Here's what we think the challenges are. Maybe you have a unique or novel way around these challenges, but this is kind of my broader thoughts on them. And then I can send this podcast to someone.

So if you're listening down the road, it's because I'm sending this to you, maybe because I think that you're falling into these, let's call them traps or at least like little issues and let's talk through them. So what's kind of your read on this? If someone were to come to you today and say, hey, Paul, I've got, again, seven in the Poconos and four in Scottsdale, I want to grow my business. How would you advise that person? This is something that we ran into a lot.

And it was. It was, I think a lot of it had to deal with how they were managing. Were they doing like trying to do a full hands-on approach? Were they trying to do a light model? I think there are some ways to try to do a multi-market approach from early on. But I think the way you were describing it as far as they build up a certain amount in a specific area or a specific region and then they move on to these areas. That's where you can be successful. I mean, I think it's you have to learn how you do it in a specific area before you can scale that across a lot of different areas.

But more often than not, it is. you get to a point where, and we've talked about it very frequently, is that there's only so many rentals you want in a given market. Yeah, there may be a thousand, two thousand available, eligible, you know, absentee owners or already, you know, permitted for a short-term rental or something like that. But of that, how many of those would you really want in your individual portfolio? So I do. I think that that's something where we get blindsided by getting into the right markets as opposed to, or blindside, something like that, but as opposed to focusing on properties and business acquisitions that actually benefit the business, the brand, some of the

underlying fundamentals and principles. It's, oh, I want to be in Sedona, I want to be in Scottsdale, I want to be in 38, I want to be in Gatlinburg, because these are all the markets everybody knows. Sure, a lot of competition in all those markets, but I digress. I mean, there's, there's so many different areas that we'll and we'll dive into all of those but i do i think that that's it's it's an easy trap to fall into is that if i can do it here i can do it anywhere and maybe once you can do that maybe twice you can do it but having people really add on 50 in a market every year and add on a new market like that i i just haven't seen that's that sustenance i've seen it where people have added on by acquisition

They've identified a new market that they want to tap into, and then they have 100 properties or 75 properties that they're bringing on and in operation staff and some other things like that. So it's, yes, that person who's got 11, somewhere between 5 and 15 units right now and is in multiple markets, I think they're going to have some problems. And we're going to talk about why over the next few minutes here. Yeah, if you thoughts that I would have would be like width versus depth. So the idea of like, okay, I'm in seven different markets, but I'm not very deep into any one of them. I think that leads to often a lot of inefficiencies and just like not really benefiting from scale. I was thinking about this as you were, I think you're explaining it very well. It's almost like all these businesses, all these vacation rental companies.

It's like there's a Goldilocks zone of what scale means. And we see scale breakdown when it gets huge. And we see that you don't benefit very much from scale when you're small. But for each market, there probably is a goldilocks zone of like if you're in a market and you have 100 units in the same area, you're like, wow, servicing these is not massively complicated. because I have a truck that's never more than three miles away from any given property. That's nice versus when you have 50. It's like, oh, well, one's over here, one's over here, you know, that sort of thing. And it's almost like there's, I was, this was explained to me by a property manager not too long ago.

The vacational industry is a lot of like unexpected but important and urgent problems. So it's like you don't know when a problem is going to occur. Heck, a property might go a month with no real problems. Like guests come in, guest checkout, you know, cleaning sap and everything's going pretty smoothly. And then you have that moment. You have that situation where like the owner's really upset. You have to react and, you know, handle it very, very quickly and very efficiently. A property issue occurs, damage, a, you know, whatever dishwasher breaks, whatever the case may be.

And then you have to react very quickly and professionally. And that's where I think scale helps you where it's like enough that your team can handle it. And it's like accessible enough, you know, power, manpower, people power, whatever you want to call it, to go and handle problems. So we can afford that like staffing. But not so big that it's like, oh my God, we're getting 100 tickets today. How do we possibly handle all these guests and homeowner problems? Again, one would say like the old Vacasa problem to some degree. it's like so big that it becomes unwieldy.

And yeah, maybe we need to come up with a better name for that. But I think that's kind of what we're trying to get out here is like people are quitting far shorter than the Goldilocks zone of scalability. And they're saying, oh, yeah, I need to go diversify. Or, you know, some of things we talked about initially was like, hey, it's tempting to do this because like I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. The example that I always heard years ago, I had this client in Hilton had, who's sold to Vakasa.

And he said, if a hurricane ever hits Hilton had, I'm screwed because it would literally kill my market and I would, you know, have no ability. he had like 400 units under management in Hilton Hatt. He was lucky and then a hurricane never really hit Hilton Henn or at least over the last decade or so. So he never had to maybe end up bearing that risk. But he wasn't wrong. If a hurricane did hit Hilton, this guy was screwed. Like his business was kind of torched.

And I've seen it. We signed this client in Fort Myers a little while ago we're working with. And they've had to completely rebuild his business from the ground up since the hurricane that hit that area like two years ago now. So they're not wrong. But I also don't know. Again, it's like that's a good thing to say out loud and never want to nod their head. The question is, is it worth distracting yourself and going, okay, again, I'm going to go build a business now in Scottsdale because I'm worried about a hurricane

in Hiltnet. Then the hurricane never comes. Then you spend 10 years wasting your time trying to do to different markets, making very little progress instead of doubling down and getting the first one to that level of scale. So that's like, I don't love the diversification argument because we can all not our heads, but it's like you just can't do it. Like I just, it's so hard to do it. That's the challenge. It is. And I think that that's where it's even if you're trying to be semi-local, Like, you know, I know some people who have tried to reach the state line from Alabama to the panhandle, you know, in 38 area and stuff like that. Even that's difficult. Like these are, and those are too highly competitive markets.

We'll go down that route as well. But I do. I think that, yeah, it's, it is a temptation that, ooh, maybe I can just kind of do a little safety net here. I knew someone who had like eight cabins up in Gatlinburg and had like 25 or 30 units down in 30A. they were just at a point there were they they had the scaling on the on the 38 side of things and we're working on the the smokies but but that's it i mean that was one of the things even going back to marketing for new owners i would always ask people specifically is okay where do you have coverage because that like a service coverage home you know a housekeeping coverage stuff

like that because the last thing i wanted to do was expand their market by like asking you know okay, they're in San Diego. Can they go up to Oceanside? Can they go up to Encinitas? Can they go, you know, up the coast a little ways? No, they can't. They didn't know that necessarily, but it's something they found out later on. And I think that that's something that even having that local diversification and trying to expand your circle or your radius there, understand like what that is going to do because you do. You add five new properties, 10 new properties in a new-ish area of your market where you didn't don't have the same service level that we're going to have a breaking point that that's one of those links that is going to start to uh once once that starts

getting pulled on the full chain we're going to see a break there at some point so it is it's it's it's a little bit of a myth there but i i think that those people who that's the number one reason there's other ways to diversify and make sure that you're safe from natural disaster or something like that yeah i mean maybe there's like business insurance you can buy or something you know, maybe there's ways. I mean, honestly, my gut reaction there is like, you probably just need to understand that is a risk that can happen. Do your best to try to like mitigate that in your own personal situation. But again, the between those two paths of, okay, I'm going to try to grow two companies and I'm going to distract myself and end up with like two mediocre companies versus I'm going to build one great or amazing company in a single market. Yes, I'm exposed to more risk, but the upside potential is greater. I'm going to make more money. And then you say for rainy day, literally in this case, right, talking about, you know, storm or something like that. But that's just the reality of it. you know, and as much as we wish we could, and let's be honest, too, right? Like, let's say you had 40 in Hilton Head and 12 in Scottsdale. Like, if you're 40 in Hilton had to get hit by the hurricane, you're still pretty screwed.

I mean, let's be honest, right? Like, your business, Scottsdale isn't really going to save you. You know, like you're still going to have to pick up the pieces in Hilton had or whatever the case may be. But, you know, I don't think you're as diverse de-risk as you think you are. I guess it would be my take on it. It's like, you know, it's like, same thing with like buying an S&P 500 stock. It's like, well, if the whole stock market goes down, then obviously your stock market is going to go down. yes you're not exposed to like one company doing very poorly but you're exposed to the whole

market so like there's going to be wins and losses long in the way but you touched on saturation earlier i want to hit on that one again because there are exceptions i will say carveouts would markets where there's a very limited number of permits like you mentioned like a uh a lake tahoe type market or we're inclined in truckie where it's like there's x number of permits i don't even know the number off top of my head but there's like a thousand permits that's all there is they're never going to be new ones and if anything they're going to go down over time okay that's fair because you might only ever be able to get 10 20 30 percent of that market let's say if you did, like, the best job possible.

You're the best property manager on planet Earth. You're never going to reach anywhere near, like, 50 or 100% market share. Even when Macassa was out there, buying companies left and right, the old version of Picasso. They probably never hit that in most markets, even markets where they were spending tens of millions of dollars to acquire inventory. They were the biggest, they were the biggest, to be clear, sorry, but they weren't the dominant where they had like 60, 70% of the market share.

And then what happened is they turned about the back door. So that's a different discussion. But yeah. So I think there's exceptions. But for the most part, again, people just quit way too soon. I think that's kind of what you were saying earlier, just couldn't agree more. They get to 12 listings, whatever, and a given market, it's not a huge market. And they say, okay, I'm done. And it's like, no, you are not, dude. Like, there's no way. I think you should

index yourself or compare yourself against maybe the biggest in that region, who is stable. So, like, at the biggest company in Gulf Shores, that's the client that we were talking about this morning, that I had a conversation and it has 200 of the best homes. It's like, okay, I should be able to get to there a little bit beyond it. If you have 40 homes, then, like, obviously you're nowhere near done if the biggest company is 200 and you have 40 because it proves that there's company in that market that can do that. And who's to say that they're not, that they've done everything they can, right? Like they may just be the leading company right now, but it doesn't mean that just because

this NBA player averaged 20 points a game doesn't mean the next guy. I can't go and average 25 points a game, right? There's nothing, no reason to say that. So yeah, I think like, I think saturation is just like, you don't have focus, you don't want to niche down or you don't have an idea of what you're looking for. And it's so rare that I actually see that occur. It does happen, but it's very, very, very rare. Like I have one of their client that comes to mind that kind of fits in this bucket.

And it's because they're on a relatively small island. So, like, literally, they can't go any further outside of this island. And they've sort of drawn this line in the island, like, it's a road. But they've drawn that line. And they say everything south of that line is what they're going after. And then it has to meet other certain criteria for size, amenities, quality of property, et cetera. But it's like, yeah, at the end of the day, to your point, if you were to go into, like, a platform like inventory, pull down the number of listings there, it's, you know, 200. They already have 100 of them.

So it's like, okay, they actually are, you know, kind of lacking, you know, the ability to get more inventory. But they can always charge more for them. There's always a lot of other things they can do to grow. so that's not necessarily the case. But yeah, I mean, you hit on saturation earlier, but anything else you'd want to tie in there? No, I mean, I think that's the key there is that, yeah, there are some saturation points in your market,

but I do. I think that that's, if you're in a smaller market, yeah, maybe that's the case. And maybe that's just what is available. And then maybe you do look around the local area. But I do. I think that we get into kind of the, we'll talk about temptation number three here,

the shiny object syndrome is I think one of the best, best things that's happened for the space is all the data that's out there, all the AI that's out there and all the comparative home values that are out there and all the data that tells us, hey, this is how much something can earn. This is how much this can earn. Now, we know that can be all taken with a grain of salt there. But I think that that's where when you do see some of these bigger names in the space that say, hey, we put this rental in this market and it's doing incredibly well because we really niched down to these specific amenities that we know drive this.

Ooh, that looks like something I could do. And obviously, we're all very competent individuals. We've built our businesses up to a certain point. We think absolutely not. No, no, no, like, is it something I can do? It's something I will do. And, you know, purpose build homes and all these other things and going into some of these markets that look nice and look pretty and look like I can do some amazing things because

I did it here. And I know we've talked about that many, many, many, many times. Just because you've done it here does not mean you can do it here. Does not mean that this is just a copy and paste. I mean, if there's anything we've learned in this space is that you cannot just copy and paste the business operations, a marketing plan, any of these things, and put it in a different market. It just doesn't work that way, whether it's the preferences of the homeowners you're going to be working with, whether it's the preferences of the travelers you're trying to attract into those homes. It is just so difficult. So I do.

I think that that shiny object of getting into a new market or getting into another area and having the confidence you can do it, I am confident you are confident that you can do it. But when the washerance repeat continues to repeat over and over again, you know, at some point you got to look at that definition of insanity and ask if I keep doing the same thing and expect different results and not getting those different results, you know, what's going to happen there? Yeah, that's the shiny object. Don't chase that squirrel. Yeah, squirrel, exactly. I think the Hormose line that he calls it is the woman in the red dress, which I think I just, I find that one better. Maybe, I don't know, maybe that's too, what's the word I'm looking for here? Maybe that's a sexist way to say it. So maybe we shouldn't use that shiny object, but because any of us are attracted to a shiny object. But yeah, I get it. I mean, like, I understand. I'm the same way. Anyone who sits there in business and says they maintain 100% focus, 100% of time. If you're out there, you're a one in 1,000 entrepreneur, right, or a small business owner because it is so challenging, I think, for us to say, we want to balance this idea of focus. And, how well we can serve a given person or a given homeowner or a given market and then we see something and we go, well, the reason that my business is successful to some degree now is because I saw something and I chased it. So you feel like, well, if I chase the next thing, I'm going to be successful again. But to your point, what happens at some point in the size of your business

is that you leave your eye off the ball. That there's a ball spinning over here. You only have two hands. A ball spinning over here on this right hand. You take your eye off of it and you go to chase the ball on your left hand and you drop this one. And then this one's not going that well and now you drop both. So that's what I've learned to you like over the years going this idea of like new market or whatever is that even people that have done this, there's a clear winner. There's one market, there's one area that's crushing and then the other market that's doing

kind of poorly. But on the website, you can't really tell. You have to have that detailed conversation with someone to be like, yeah, my, and it could be the opposite. Like I gave the example earlier of 40 properties in Hilton had 12 in Scottsdale. Sometimes the shiny object means I chase the shiny object and shoot, Scottsdale is a better market, but I got this anchor way down of Hilton that I don't want to give

up on it. You know, it's like, well, I have 40 over here, 12 over here, but like honestly the margins are better over here like the homeowners are acquiring or easier like and then that's a tough operation or decision too because you might have to get rid of almost kill off your original baby to get work to work on the new baby work on the new business and then that can be an awkward decision to have too like that's not it's not always the one that you focus on second ends up being the worst one sometimes the second one is a better one but then you have a hard decision to make on the other side so again none of this is easy a lot of small business decisions in general are between a rock

and a hard place and you have to do something that makes you uncomfortable or that you don't want to do, you know, and I've seen that happen again and again. So I'll hit on temptation number four here. It kind of is temptation number three to some degree, but just this idea that bigger is better, that, oh, if I have five markets, then a homeowner will respect me more? This is one that I see actually quite a bit. The idea that, oh, well, I have complementary markets, people that go to Blue Ridge, Georgia also go to Destin, Florida. So if I have inventorying both markets, it's great because I'm able to do cross-marketing. Never really ever comes into fruition that much as much as you think. There's been some brands that have tried it. There's a company here in the

Myrtle Beach area, condo world that was doing that, I think, for a while where they were listing, let's say, inventory in Pigeon Forge, like resort, hotel inventory, on the surface, it makes sense. Your Pigeon Forge customer guest is similar to your Myrtle Beach guest. In fact, some people joke, it's the Myrtle Beach, the mountains and vice versa, right? So in theory, yes, there'd be a lot of overlap there. But then in practice, like, it doesn't ever seem to work as well as you think, because it's like you're more well-known for one thing. And then you're kind of bolting in these other things on the back end that you're just not well-known for. And as a result, it just doesn't land well. So the bigger is better. I think it's an illusion. I think you're not really actually

seeing the results you expect there and this whatever efficiencies you think you're building from a marketing standpoint don't really work well if you're in two markets. Again, I maintain this a lot. We talk about this a lot in the art of hospitality feed. Let's get someone to nail an area or region first, like one state, like because we have one property manager say, I'm going to manage the best homes in North Carolina, let's say, a very diverse market. We've got the mountains. We've got the mid area. Like there's golf, Pinehurst. We've got the coast. We've got the other banks. We've got beautiful beaches, North Carolina. I'm in South Carolina for the listener. But North Carolina is beautiful as well. Like, let's have someone try to figure

that out first. I'm going to, I'm going to be a massive property manager in North Carolina before they say, okay, yeah, I need to go to whatever, like you say, Scottsdale or Florida or something like that. Like, we haven't seen that. So that has proved to me that, like, you know, anything that you do outside of that is just, you know, it's bigger is not always better. I guess is how I'd close that out. I mean, I think what concerned me was people who, like, they were sitting at somewhere between 50 and 75 units and their number was 300. It's great. It's a good, big number, everything like that. But I don't even know, I mean, if we were thinking about it logically, I don't know that we could reverse engineer a strategy that guarantees that you're going to

hate it. It's like, big, hairy, audacious goals are great. Smart goals are better because it is. It's something that you're actually going to be, have that realistic idea of, okay, sustainable growth is good. Yeah, you, everybody's got that 300, 400, 400, 200. I mean, everybody's got that big number out there. But, again, is that bigger number going to make, ensure that your business is, you

running better, running more efficiently, more effectively, or you're making more money. What does that look like? And I think for so many people it is, they think about 300, but they don't think about all the things that take, that go into getting to that 300 or all of the, you know, whether or not you can even sustain that or whether you're making money at those levels of 150, 250, 350, 300. You would hope you are. But are you putting the scaling mechanisms into place so that you can. You can efficiently onboard people and you can make sure that you're delivering on the guest hospitals. I mean, it's, I'm so happy we just deal on marketing because there's so much more to have than that. And when you are making growth decisions like

this, yeah, I think you absolutely have to be taking all that into consideration. So bigger is better on the surface. Definitely keep digging and pull back, they peel back the layers of that onion because there's a way more to talk about there. Yeah, I mean, everything about that, I think, is just classic, you know, again, to some degree ego, but just to some degree of like, I think we want our business to be big. I think my, everyone may have their own personal motivation about that. I'm always torn, like what you describe there where someone says, I have this big, hairy, audacious goal.

Like, I think in a way, it does give you a little bit of like a, man, I have this mountain to climb. And I think that can be exhilarating for people to feel like I got to get up this mountain. And if I get there, I will have accomplished something amazing. I think that can motivate people. on the flip side, I think it can be very demotivating when people give leadership or executives or founders, et cetera, give very unrealistic goals that are basically impossible to hit. And then the team feels let down.

So I think if you have that, you've almost going to have like a bit of a bronze metal, silver metal, gold metal kind of vibe to it of like, hey, we're trying to get a 400 units. Obviously, we can't do that in a year with short of acquiring a company. Like, it's basically impossible. But let's say, we're at 55 right now. 400 is the 10 year goal or the five year goal. I think EOS talks about that a lot. So let's go from 55 to 75. Like, that's an aggressive plan.

That means you're adding 20 properties in the year. That's going to take some effort for sure. But hey, look, a bronze medal for us would be getting to 60. A silver medal will be getting to whatever, 62 or 63 or something like that. Maybe 67. I don't know. But the way that you might think about it is like if you think about it in chunks or stages, I think it's like it gives your brain something to attach to and say,

okay, this is how we're going to get there. And then if you hit the silver goal, you're like, hey, look, I still had great. Like, I think it motivates the team. And one thing I've seen in a lot of companies that I've been, you know, consulting when they revolve with is the leadership comes in. They have, what would you describe it? They have so-called visionary capabilities, or they talk a lot about visionary activities. They put a big goal on the table like that, 500 homes, 500 properties, whatever the case may be, you have 50.

They walk out. And it's like, okay, but that's, it's either ignored and just people don't take it seriously. Or it's just seen as like, well, it's demotivating because we don't really have a path to get there. Like I don't think people conspire to like, oh, we're going to 10x the business and everyone just figures it out. I think it's more so like sustained, like you said, sustained growth and sustained success. and that's what's actually going to keep people, you know, on board and that sort of thing. Now, is it a fun exercise, like once every once in a while to sit there and think, how do we add a lot more homes quickly?

Yeah. Like, I think the Vacasa signing bonus thing. I don't think we talked about this in a while, but Vakasa used to send signing bonuses. That is an aggressive move, right? To say, to go to a homeowner and say, I'll give you 10 grand to sign on with my company and I'm going to offer you the same commission you're currently paying because I'm that confident that you're going to be happy with me over the long term. And if you don't like it, after six months, you can leave and keep the 10 grand.

Like, that is a hell of an offer that would require obviously a lot of capital to do it. But that's the kind of thing where it's like, that would come out of brainstorm meeting like that where you're like, all right, this is a crazy move like to that whole big hairy audacious goal. Let's give it a crack and see what happens if we can make the finances work or whatever. I'd be very interested in that as like those types of activities. But again, I don't think that's like your day to day. It's not just like, how are we going to attend next to the business? Like this business doesn't work that way. Like it's just more of like a grinded out, clean after clean, turn after turn, homeowner after homeowner, delivering the great hospitality.

And then, you know, you end up seeing it in the review count and how people feel about the property manager over time. I think all that kind of boils down to, I mean, we talk about the pitfalls here. I mean, I think one of the main areas is that ultimately what we're able to do, what we're able to come in and able to help out with is minimized because it is. It's every time I've worked with someone who is in multiple markets, they always want to focus on one area more than the other. Because that's a good area. The other one is a distraction.

Just like we said. And it's in reality. But it is. I mean, now you've, okay, you've diluted from that primary area or from the secondary area, whichever it is, if it's your growth area, you're not, you're diluting your ability to grow. If it's your primary area, you're diluting your, you're where you've made your bread butter. That is one of those areas where if you're unable to overcome or decide where you want to put that focus, it is nearly impossible to do both effectively, efficiently. you're going to overspend in some areas, you're going to underspend it, you're going to miss the mark because that messaging will not be completely parallel. It will not be completely identical. It's not

going to work to be able to do that. So I think at the top level, that's the thing, is that if you can't determine where you want to focus more or less and you can't do it, we really can't do it evenly, how can we devise a strategy from there? And maybe you, I mean, I know that you've, you've kind of addressed this with some areas. How have you tried to overcome this? my belief, a path for it to work is to essentially you're growing two small businesses. Like, where there's some level of efficiency that can be gained from being on one call and having one conversation, but it's almost like we have one client that we work with who has a real estate division and a vacational division, and we actually book separate calls for them.

I know it sounds a little bit silly. Why would you book separate calls for them? I'm like, I don't even care if they're back to back, but like we're going to end one call almost and write it off in our head and then we're going to start the next call. You know, there's a little fractals that we carry over and stuff like that. But like, that's my belief is that if you're going to do this, you're not going to get any SEO benefit. There's not a meaningful SEO benefit from it that much until you're massive. Then there's an SEO benefit.

But when you're tiny in two markets, it's not really going to help you that much. You're not the local expert twice. You just have to be local expert two different times, meaning not twice in the web, same website or same brand, but two different times across two different, you know, marketing management pages, two different brand pages, like all those kind of things. And again, I think there's some efficiencies again in the back end. So I'm not saying this impossible. Again, we talk about that at the very top of the call.

It's not impossible. But each one has to have its own P&L. Each one has to have its own marketing budget. Like, it's not what I've had exactly the, the situation that you described in client calls before. And it's basically what happens is we have an hour call. And we talk about one market for 50 minutes. And at the end, they're like, well, we should talk about the other market.

You know, and then we spend 10 minutes on it. We kind of go through it quickly. Like, okay, we'll do a few those things and copy, paste them over here. And then it's like, okay, all right, bye. You know, like we just puts a little attention into them. So our 10 minute call that we had at the very end of this 50 minute or hour long conversation, someone else in that market, this is the comparison I always do. Someone else in that market just had a two hour call only about that market.

They woke up that day and they said, I'm going to dominate Scottsdale or I'm but it dominate Hilton that. And for you, it's your 10th priority, you know, on your list. It's like, yeah, like unless you're just an unbelievable entrepreneur, which some people are, but unless you're an unbelievable entrepreneur or you have some advantage built into your business model, like at Darm, we had someone who contacted investor groups to get their inventory. That is a unique thing that I've never seen before. So they get the investor group first, then they go in the market after.

So then they can go into different markets because they already have the investor and the homeowner essentially secured. And then it's a matter of choosing a market that would be the best for that particular investor, a homeowner. Very unique, not seen that before. So there's, there's unique models out there. But, you know, for the most part, I think that there's a reason this is really challenging because, again, you generate so much less, I hate this word, but like synergies or efficiencies

or whatever you want to call it, then you think. And then you're just like, oh, wow, like growing, I'd say it this way. Growing one business, small business is hard enough. Growing two is even harder, you know, so it's like unless you feel like you can sort of, you know, be sliding, you know, be skiing down the ski mountain and also like baking a cake at the same time. If you can do that, then if you can't do that, then you're probably setting yourself up for a headache. There's one line in Seinfeld where Kramer says he's writing and he wrote his coffee

table book while he was skiing. So I'm not a Seinfeld person. I know you. But if that's how talented you are, awesome. Otherwise, yeah, I would, you know, stick that focus as much as you can in one area until you have grown to a level where you can start to replicate, duplicate some of those scaling mechanisms that you have in place. If you don't have those mechanisms, in place, moving to a new market is probably not the way to grow your business. So, yeah, Hermose had a good one the other day. I was listening to one of his videos and he had someone ask, hey, my business, I've started it four years ago.

I think he got it to like a million of revenue or something like that in revenue, not profit revenue. And he said, like, I really want to step back and I want to be more passive. And it was like, he had the best response I've heard a while. He's like, dude, you want passive income. You don't have enough active income right now. You know, don't want to have passive income. And that just hit me like a sack of bricks.

I'm just like, that is a great description of it. Like you don't have enough, you're not making enough, you're not generating a big enough business that has a mode around it or has some level of like, oh, God, how am I ever going to compete with this company? Like a million dollars a year of revenue wise is nothing to be ashamed of or nothing to be, nothing to laugh at. It took me a long time to get there. Like, I'll freely admit that. It'll be a long time to get over that revenue mark many, many, many years. You know, so it's hard to do that. But at the same token, it's like, in the grand scheme of things, it's like, good job.

There's now 10,000 other businesses in that same bracket as you. And you got to go beat up against them, you know, that sort of thing. Like Bezos can have, you know, passive income, right? You cannot if you're a small property manager. You know, you do not have passive income. You have, you need to generate much more active income and then build off from there. So one more active thing you need to do, dear listener, is go to your podcast app of choice and leave us a review. Five stars.

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