Heads In Beds Show - The MOST Important Question To Ask Before Investing In Growth (Part II)

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, the duo asks this question: what is the #1 thing holding my vacation rental company back from growth? Part II of this episode series. Go back 1 episode to find part I!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 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 vacation rental 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. Boy, I was late and then we were chatting, but what's going on? What's happening?

uh it's for us it's it's it's on recording week it's openly even though for when we release it'll be i am it might be almost a month later and it's not so yeah it's summertime here so so this is um you know it's it's it's fun yeah we've been talking golf now if anybody really wanted to get in another conversation hey just reach out we'll we'll include you it's we do a group chat and that's a short one for us so please at some point please by all means enjoy enjoy the golf conversation but how are you? you doing, sir? No, pretty good, like you said, but those listening, if they go to the Google, they'll be able to find out if they're not a golf fan who won the Open Championship

at this moment, the time that we're recording, we don't know. So, you know, I'm just, I'm just really happy for John Rom. I'm glad he pulled it off. So we'll see if that ends up to be. We will see. I'll get it. But yeah, so today we went on this last week and then we actually literally ran our time, which sometimes we say that as a bit, but in this case, we actually literally ran our time and we didn't get to have the, half the agenda that we had. So we're kind of building on this one a little bit. So if you didn't go back last week and look at the part one in the feed or we talked about like this is the number one thing that stops you from growing and it's what are your constraints. And identifying those constraints is so critical. And we went

into a lot of details. So we're going to pick up where we left off here a little bit. But I'm skipping over to the next one in our bullet point list here, which I think we touched on part one a little bit, but let's just maybe expand it out, blow it out a little bit. Supply constraints, you know, homeowner constraints. These are things that really impact a lot of folks that we work with because, you know, in some markets, there's only a limited number of properties. If you, you could be the best vacational manager in the world, but if there's 50 permits in South Lake Tahoe when you're a given neighborhood or a truckie, or there's only Key West as a market where there's a very limited number of available rentals. We have a client down in that market. There's

a ceiling to how many properties you could actually manage. It creates a very obvious, I think, incentive towards the good news about those markets I found over the last eight or nine years or so is that they could be phenomenal demand markets because once you get one of the properties that is legal, it's like, wow, it's not that hard to book this thing and people pay a lot of money to come travel here. So it can be a bit of a good thing. But obviously, it's going to make it harder to acquire inventory. So this is more your world than mine. But what's kind of your experience diving in this for so long like you did on the homeowner

acquisition side of these limited markets or there's very few homes actually available if they're illegal? It was. It was always an interesting thing to do the data polls because that really told us, you know, what a market looked like. But there's levels to those data pools even. You know, you start with absentee owner data. Okay.

It's a good start. Big number, big pool. Okay. This is everybody who doesn't live in a given market. But then you do. In some of these markets where there is far more tight regulation or permit caps or see also, see also all the other items, maybe it's on the side of the street, long term, short term, anything like that. Oh boy, that number of 2,000 rentals that you were initially targeting turns into 1,000, turns into 500. And then maybe you're thinking about, well, did these actually meet my ideal property profile?

we went from 2000 to 1,000 down to 500 or 400 and I do I think that that's something where every manager is a little different everybody is a little different with how what they want to bring on quality versus quantity this that all the other things there but those who had not had this conversation before of okay one of my favorite conversations to have in the initial digital portion was okay we're going to run some Google ads we're going to target keyword that are in the markets that you're looking to attack. Now, I know you've got a really broad market that you think you're attacking, but specifically, where couldn't you go?

I mean, you have house cleaners, you have this and that, you have maintenance, things like that. Where could you not go? Because the last thing I want to do is get a really highly qualified lead in an area that's actually going to stretch you thin operationally. So I think that that's something that, in a few cases, That was the first time they thought about that. And I think it was a eye-opening moment of maybe they hadn't. The important question they hadn't asked was, okay, what does our growth strategy really look like? And I think everybody kind of prioritizes that differently. You know, is it we need more money coming in. We need more revenue coming in. We need more homes to be booked. You know, we have an overflow of travelers right now. But we simply don't have enough inventory to sustain all of that, all of that great traffic. Good job. Conrad. I mean, that's obviously what we do. But no, I think it is truly something that once you think about that homeowner side, once it's, it's not just about growth. It's about growth,

education, retention. There's just so much to it. So I think that the homeowner constraints may not be, or the supply constraints, however you're looking at it, may not be as visible right way or you maybe you know obvious to us but yeah they do i think that it's the once you start scratching under the surface surface and i think that's also why it's very important to vet and and go through that process of just hey i'm interested in entering your program okay sign contract we're in the door i think you that's that's where we get some uh some pimples kind of developing below beneath the skin that will pop and erupt here at some point so yeah i mean go feel free to pop in on that owner's side of things, what you think.

No, I think it brought a lot of good problems there because I started with regulation or limited inventory, which feels like a very hard, you know, line in the sand, if you will. But gosh, there's so many layers to that, right? Like, I'll give you a better example. You didn't exactly say this. Maybe it was implied in what you said, but let's say there's a property manager in the market and they say, well, I only take homes that will do $100,000 per year more in rental revenue.

That's my standard. Well, there may be a market where there's no limitations on building, but the top, it may be the top 4% of homes that fit that criteria. So in a market like Gatlinburg, how many homes do 100K or more a year? Some, but it's the minority by a wide margin in a market like Gatlinberg or Pigeon Forge or Destin or something like that, although Destin will probably be a little bit more. But some market's a little bit harder. Every property in a Southern California beach market I've learned, you know, with very few exception is doing $100,000 more revenue. Or I think you and I worked on one together kind of during my earlier part of contracting with Ventoria a long time ago with Hiltonhead that said that, 100K or more in Hiltonhead, which eliminates every condo and leaves about half the homes.

somewhere in that range, I think is where we landed on. So yeah, if those are your standards, I think you have to know what your standards are, but also realize how small are you're making your pool if that's what you're optimizing for. If you're saying, I want to manage, you know, as many homes as possible, but then I only take homes that are 100K, those are sort of like opposite goals. You know, it's like, I want to build the biggest company I can build. I'm only going to work four hours a day. Like those are opposite goals, you know, from that side of things. So, yeah, I think having a clear picture of what you're going after, why, understanding what your capacity is to your point, what geographic areas you want to serve, what geographic areas

you actually can serve. Those are two different things in some situations, as you know and as you've dealt over the years, what are your capacity as far as your team goes? If you actually had 10 owners come to you right now and say, okay, I'm going to sign tomorrow and I want my home listed as soon as possible. Could you actually onboard 10 homes? Like most people couldn't, in my experience, like they can handle maybe a few at a time at most.

So you probably want to, you know, market to that level of your capacity. And it is interesting just to zoom out for a second on one thing you did say where there was a time period for sure, you know, I would say back in like 21, 22 and a good chunk of 23 where it was if you if you give me anything I could rent it and I think that's where the fee for pitch of inventory acquisition and obviously the company that you're working with was very focused in on that as they should have been because there's a moment where that was a concern in the business if I just had more homes I could fill them and I didn't need them to be perfect I didn't need them to be the ideal location I didn't need to have these really strict

standards like people were just happy to get out of the house and travel during this COVID travel boom and they would take it I almost like the large well established clients I have today that are like in good financial health want more inventory but the smaller ones that are reaching out to us, that's not ever what they bring up. They might bring it up as like, oh, yeah, I'll take it if I can get it. You know, they're open to more inventory. They're not like saying I wouldn't sign more inventory. Very rare you'd hear that from any property manager in my experience over the years,

but it fits their criteria. Back to that earlier point. But now I hear, yeah, I need to fill up what I got. You know, and I do think it is a bit of a balance and it's kind of like, you know, lifting a dumbbell with the light arm and the left arm. It's got to be done in some, you know, level of balance because we don't have one portion of the business gate way out of whack. Why, we have all these homes and we can't fill them.

and then vice versa, man, we have so few homes if we only had a little bit more. We grow the company. I think you got to find the middle ground there. It's just always, you know, again, it's often you solve one constraint and their new constraint pops up with regards to demand on the guest side, how much bookings can I actually put in there, and then demand, obviously, in the owner's side to actually have enough owners reaching out my experience. When we look at like saturation in markets and things like that, I would say, you know,

in that time frame 21, 22, 23, most of the, most of your competition was other professional property managers. I think that's the other thing that that kind of brought, was brought into the freight here, not that more inventory didn't go to your competitors, but you also had people that were probably one ZDZD doing their own Airbnb co-hosting. The rise of that RBO. Right. Bacasa evolved trying to do something like that.

Somewhere along the lines, you know, that is. It's not just thinking about those competitors. It's thinking about all the supply that's out there. And it is. It's you, while the number of travelers probably hasn't changed that much. I mean, since 20, probably more than 2021, 22. But 23 to 25, most of the time those numbers are pretty similar. The fact is that there are 150 more options, 200 more options, and not just more options.

Because, again, you could have the most unique properties in the world. you could have commodities and we've gone over that. But I think if there's been anything that's been learned over the last five years, is that people are looking for those incredible experiences and people are willing to spend a little more for those incredible experiences. So if you have kind of a standard property in your market, and you have a market that's, you know, being, we'll say, invaded by someone who is looking to, It is. I mean, I think we both are big fans of Ben Wolf and what he does. But that's what he does. He comes into a market. He seizes a really good opportunity and he puts some great experiences up there that may be head and shoulders above the rest of the competition. So that's a supply homeowner, but that's coming into an external type of constraint as well. And I don't know where that fits in our list here, but it's something that when we look at that homeowner side of things, and we look at the supply side, that's it's not

just about, again, more of those numbers that we've talked about. It's what kind of supply and what kind of impressive, I mean, there's some straight up impressive properties and experiences that are being created in the space. Yeah. The bar gets higher, to your point. I think that's a good way to, you know, sum that thought process up. So if, yeah, to your point, the inventory that comes online, that matters,

the quality of inventory, that matters. And then where they're pricing it at because some people are able to price it in a way that, you know, at your point is attracting the top of the market. And it almost becomes aspirational, you know, for people to look at it and go, oh, that's really what I'm after. That's what I'm, you know, that's what I'm made me for. So, yeah, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit here. So we kind of touched on this last block, I would say, reasonably well. We talked about things like ordinances, zoning, H-O-A bans.

That kind of relates to the inventory side of things. Certainly there's a lot of the direction I'd like to go and maybe. And there's other things related to that, by the way, we didn't touch on. So, for example, like, cost. Like, let's say the, this is a common thread this year for some clients, your insurance went up 5x. And then the property owner goes back to the manager and they're like, yeah, I'm just going to sell it. rid of it or I want to move on from it. So there's things that are always outside your control that you have to deal with.

But I would say number eight is just like any operational hiccup, any service, you know, hiccups, any constraints you have around people, I think has been a huge issue. Again, I don't hear this as much now as I did during peak, you know, kind of COVID demand periods. But we have clients who, and I'm warning them for one client right now who want housekeeping ads running because they're trying to recruit housekeepers and they can't find them. So they're like, hey, run an ad for me on Facebook and like try to get them to go to this forum and fill it out.

And I would need to find housekeepers that are within a reasonable radius of my properties that can clean and can be reliable and, you know, I'll happily pay them this fee for doing it, but I have a hard time finding these people that are actually solid. So again, is that a little bit probably less acute in most places today than it was a few years ago, probably in my experience, just hearing from clients and what they complain about, if you will. But, I mean, there's so many things that go, not just housekeeping. That's obviously probably the most common need, but it could be having the right vendor, you know, to work with if there's an issue. The HVAC goes out in the middle of July as we record this right now. It's like, you don't want to

have that happen. Do you have something that you can actually rely on to, you know, provide that good guest experience and get things, you know, sorted quickly. So, you know, homeowner and, you know, guest marketing constraints, I think are a little bit easier to outsource. You can find a company that will help you those things, obviously. But some things are boots on the ground. Like, you can't hire someone from the Philippines to go in and fix a unclogged toilet, as it were. Those are people that have to be boots on the ground. So, yeah, in some markets, this is more of an extreme issue. Like obviously, these very hard to access places. I'm thinking of Hawaii. I'm thinking a tell you ride. I'm thinking of park

city, very high cost of living, very remote places. This is a huge issue. But it can impact pretty much anyone depending on the time of year or maybe depending on how well you've said of your business you know i have a client who struggles to find people not that they're in a market that's extremely hard to access or anything like that i honestly think they just don't pay enough they pay very low wages and they have a hard time in tracking people because what kind of person you're going to attract the best talent you're not going to attract the best talent you're not going to help your business so as a result they're picking off the bottom of the pile and off the top of the pile when they're putting out applications for roles you know for that i mean i think of

some of those horror stories that i heard from a people going to the outer banks and having to Like, you know, they have a bus or a band that get picked up at 5 a.m. Get driven out to the outer banks and then spend all day and you're driving back three hours just to do it all again the next day. And same thing. I think there was someone we're working on with in Volusia County. So West Palm Beach, kind of that east coast of Florida there, nice areas. But they were having people, you know, a bus came to Orlando and drove the two hours out and did the same thing there. So I do.

I think that that's something that. the larger you are, you know, you make the concessions and you figure out ways to do that. But if you are trying to grow your business in an area where there is just not a lot of labor, I know, in northern Minnesota, we get a lot of people over the, those summer employees up there, a lot of students, a lot of students on those summer visas, you know, having, which is a good time for them, an educational experience for them, but you're finding the people that are going to do the work for you. So I do.

I think that that's something that it's more constrained in certain areas. I mean, I think Park City is another good example because it's a different kind of example. You have to live 30, 40, 50 minutes out. And then what other costs are you taking into consideration there? So I think that's something that anytime you're thinking about growth and that's, it's, it's not just the marketing costs attached to bringing those people on. It's not just this and that. But again, we talked about it. How can you get your people up there?

How can you get your people out there? How can you get the best? And it's not just people. It's not just bodies. I think that's the other thing because what happens when you just put bodies out there, well, things don't exactly happen the way you want them to. And all of a sudden, those four-star reviews come through and those three-star reviews. And heaven forbid we kept going down.

But the two-star and the one-star review that, oh boy, just one makes a really, really big impact there. So, again, you can't just fill the gaps, fill it with people. It's got to be the right people. not taking that into consideration. I mean, it is. You don't have to look at it. We've all seen the org chart that just has been pieced together. And, okay, we've moved this person into this role and this person in this role.

And, again, inevitably, there's one missed hire along the way or one this. And while it seemed like that was just a small item and they missed one cleaning or they did this. Oh, boy. Look at the impact. It has long term on the business there. So we can all spin that story, and we've heard the horror stories. We've seen, we've experienced, we've witnessed it. So it's one of those things that once it happens, you never let it happen again.

With these operational and service constraints, once you identify them, you never let them be a constraint moving forward. But it kind of takes something like that to happen to kind of nudge things forward and make sure it's a priority. Yeah. Well, and the whole point I think of this two-part episode so far has been if you are, if you have a constraint and you're not working on it and then you let it just sit there, it becomes this bottleneck that if you're not aware of it, you know, really kills your momentum. And I think that can be a negative feeling. So imagine you're going hard on homeowner marketing. You're signing new inventory. You have, you know, guest marketing firing on all cylinders. So you think you're getting all these bookings that are going to, you know, happen in the coming six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, sort of what the case may be. And then you have these people issues in the back end and the cleanings don't go well to your point. And it's kind of like this little, you know, it's built on a shaky one. little Lego block and that Lego block falls out and then the whole thing just falls apart, right, which is maybe a bit extreme. It's not like one bad clean will kill your company, obviously, but it's more so just like, that's the fundamental issue of just like, I think it's

almost just, I assume our clients want to have quality of life as well. And when you hire the right people, like I've had to learn this the hard way as well in my own business. When you hire the right people and they're working on it, I don't stress about it. I'm not saying they're going to be perfect or they're never going to make mistake. Of course, I make mistakes whole time. Of course, my team makes mistakes regularly as well. But you feel like it's a lot more settled. It's like, oh, the best person to solve that issue is working on it right now. So if I can help them, I'll help them. But otherwise, like, they know what to do.

They know how to fix it. And that's a really, I think, healthier way to live and healthier way to operate a small business is just like having the right people in place. So you feel confident and you feel at ease almost by the fact that they're the ones dealing with the problem. So yeah, having the right people, obviously, is a huge factor, I think, in being able to, you know, deliver the service that you're after and then ultimately grow and get that next step for sure.

Maybe we can skip ahead a little bit here. I know we talked about this previously, this idea of, you know, number 10, is I think near and dear to our hearts, right? Paul, it's any sort of external dependency constraint, right? So the way that I think about this is that the most common one you're going to hear, of course, is you know, you're getting all your bookings from Airbnb. We've talked about the sad nauseam before. If you're a listener of this podcast for any length of time, you don't really need to be told about this. But that is absolutely a constraint in the business. Or even if it's not a constraint, it can be a risk. And I would argue it is a constraint because

you're probably missing out on a lot of additional opportunities where you could drive more revenue through having your own direct booking marketing set up through having at least have some channel diversity right at least that bookings coming in from verbo and Airbnb because that constraint doesn't always show immediately but it's that one thing where it's like your payment gateway gets shut down you get banned from Airbnb I mean you get uh we saw this viral thread now at this point a few weeks ago of a guest getting refunded based on his messages sent to the host without the guests actually asking for a refund so Airbnb is proactively appears in some cases refunding a guest just due to the messages and the text content within the message that's sent

with an Airbnb. There's so many reasons, obviously, why, you know, extra dependencies can pop into play at the OT level. But it could be the PMS level, too. And we don't need to take shots on any PMS. But, like, I had a situation with the PMS a little PMS little PMS. And the, and the sinking broke for this particular PMS on the API integration between the website that they got built custom and their back-end PMS system. There were some little API hiccup there. Couldn't do direct bookings for almost 72 hours with this particular PMS. And it's like, yeah, that sucks. Like, that made our, we turned off all the ads and we tried to stop it. But, like, we just lost days of direct bookings we would have gotten. And this

particular client 10K plus a day of direct bookings just not happening because you know third party stuff goes out so can you actually eliminate this constraint probably not can you reduce some of these constraints or at least eliminate you know the the major stress of 90% Airbnb absolutely so I think it's just kind of picking your poison here a little bit choosing the right vendor to work with choosing OTAs to work with that are actually you know your partners or hopefully have your best interest somewhat aligned with theirs and I think you can at least try to limit this but but in my mind you're always going to have to rely on this business on other people you're going to always have to rely on other partners, other platforms, et cetera, you just have to decide which one of these

is, like, actively harming what I'm trying to accomplish and which one of these are kind of a devil I know type of relationship that you just have to smile and deal with from my perspective. Here's the thing. I think the strongest PMS is not a standalone system still. That's the thing. That's the reality is that even the all-inclusive enterprise level, we can name up the big name.

Enterprise. And I mean, that's right. The air quotes are well within rights there. But that it is, is that still, your PMS is dependent on so many different systems working together. Even within the PMS itself, you've got so many different modules that are firing on all cylinders there. So that was always something, I think I've said it probably once or twice before, is that your tech stack is only as strong as the weakest part of that tech stack. Because inevitably, it's intertwined with all of the other things you do in your business. And whether you're working with, let's name Osne Phi Bree's way, all these really positive beneficial systems, if they're not talking to your PMS, if they're not doing the right thing, you know, your whole business is going to have a constraint on it because the instruments you use to run your business are not talking the same language. They're not talking together. They're not talking at all. And thus, your business cannot run effectively, efficiently, name the, name these describer.

you want to use there. So I do. I think that that's something that I love people's willingness to go out and experiment and try different things in our space. It is amazing. I mean, there's something to, because I also think we have a lot of great minds who have come up with so amazing solutions, but standalone solutions. So how do we cobble it together and how do we integrate here and do a two-way integration here and all the easy things behind the scenes? I hated being a part of those discussions, but I love being a part of those discussions, because it was interesting to hear what the needs were and how we could find a solution-ish, kind of, or, you know, whatever that happened to be. So that is. That's something that I do think, you know, those vendors, those are relationships

you want to keep really, really strong. And sometimes those are easy, that's easier to have happen than others. Sometimes you can't get that email back. Sometimes you can't get that call back. Sometimes you can't get that call back. Sometimes that support ticket feels like it sits just a little too long. But you do. In order to have a strong business, you have to be in pretty good touch and pretty good communication with that PMS, with that software vendor. Otherwise, you get kind of blindsided when a whole PMS shift happens and you're forced to start making some decisions over the next 12 months at Libra's LMPM streamline. I don't know anything under the inhabit brand there, but I'm sure when this has come out. We'll have some fallout discussion. It's public now. Yeah, I don't think,

I don't think that's anything too untold. Yeah. Yeah, good example. So I think we can say it, right? Inhabits killing live rise and they're killing LNBM, right? It's all going to fold in the streamline. So I was actually surprised it took them so long to do this. I've talked about this at length before on art of hospitality and with Adam where it's like they bought these companies and my understanding was, and I'll give you another example. Guestee's done this. Guestee's bought different PMS companies and they folded them pretty quickly. My VR was a company and worked with, for example, that they acquired some time ago. And they folded them in pretty quickly to the Guestey product and they've acquired Rentals United. I think Rentals United

is going to stay on its own because it does different things a little bit on some other channels. But I assume it's just about our time before Rendals United kind of gets folded into guesty once they get all the tech stuff figured out in the back end. So yeah, I mean, that can happen to you. You know, I think the PMS is tough because as we learn from the Brooks Comparin survey, everyone has a PMS. That is one piece of, the analogy that I've done on the AOH show is that the PMS is the spinal cord of your business. You cannot operate with a spinal cord. You'll just be a bag of flesh and, you know, and organ sitting on the ground, right?

That's what holds us up. So I do feel like that's the critical piece. Everything else is kind of more of an accessory. You know, like, it's really nice to have like a good pricing tool. That could be your right arm, for example. But is it a requirement? Like, no, not really. Like you could run your company without a pricing tool.

I wouldn't recommend it, but you can. You can run your company without any marketing. Maybe that's like a left foot. You can live without a left foot. What I wouldn't recommend it, you know, but you could do it if you want to, but you really can't run these businesses without a PMS. So I think it's fair to identify that as,

it's almost like, I'm thinking back to that SWAT audit stuff that we talked about like your PMS doing what LiveRos is done and just saying, like, yep, we're shutting down in a year. You have to go to streamline. It's a bit of a threat. I also don't know how you can mitigate that. The obvious answer might be, you know, someone out there listening right now saying, forget it. I'll build my own PMS, but like, there's so many rife problems with that.

But I think you just, again, dance with the devil that you know and pick a PMS out there that seems to have your best interest at heart. But I think you're bang on with like having a good relationship with that company and like be a good client to them. You know, if you're, you want them to survive, like you need to support them. Adam talks about this at length too on the other show that we do. you know, you shouldn't be trying to beat them up at every turn either. And if they make a mistake, like, they deserve criticism or they deserve, you know, problems. But I mean, we have relationship with clients that are so strong at this point where, like, they could pretty much ask me anything and I would do it with a reason. And I think that's the kind of relationship you want with your

PMS is give feedback, you know, be helpful, give advice, do a case study if they ask you if you like work with that PMS because they're not going to survive for a long time if, you know, everyone around them is out to get them. And I don't think that's the case in most situations, but it's one of these examples where, you know, some things are outside your control, you know, a big private equity firm doing a roll up and getting rid of software platforms. You didn't choose that if you were a live rest customer before the inhabit acquisition, obviously. But you've got to deal

with the cards as they get dealt to you. And that can obviously be a constraint in your business as you're going along, particularly if the tech is not working for you, I think you nailed it there in the middle there of that, where it's like, if the tech is not working for you, if you can't do what you want to do in your business because the tech is a limiting factor and it's causing you the ability to not grow faster or drive more

revenue, then yeah, it's probably worth considering changing. But I will say the grass is always greener on the other side that people always say that. I've had clients of swap PMSs and then regretted it, you know, six months later and have changed again or gone to a different one. So it's not always, you know, sunshine and roses. The salespeople are one thing. The actual experience of using that PMS is always something a little bit different. Well, and it is. I mean, I ended with two points here. Keep me these two points here. But it is. I think we've already seen the erosion of trust of what happens when you say that you're going

to support, support, support, support, support, and you pull the rug out. Because look at Homeway software at one point. That was the mainstay. That was the end-all be-all. I don't know how many installs escapee has today but they did about the worst corporate communication strategy and I don't know any of them I'm sorry you know take take whatever you

out of this one but it's low single digits in our clients that I know that you know I know it's one of the least popular ones I mean it is they said okay escape is the option escape is the option then they say nope v12 is what we're switching to and then it's going to be nope now it's escape I mean over the course of eight months you told someone

this and then you told something that and you pulled the road rug right out from under someone so it's it's not uncommon in the space and and i don't think that it's something that won't happen again but um but yeah and then the second point being here's the other thing is that not just the constraints of you know a pms that's working working fine for you doing like that you're growing your business you started on x it was great supported you up to 15 units 20 units. Your business at that point is growing, but it's also maturing. You have more needs. You have a more complex running business. And I think that that's something that we talked about. Maybe you didn't need housekeepers. Maybe you were going around from house to house and doing it

and all yourself and doing all of this. Now you need to hire more people on. So you need the technology that's going to support that. So yes, this PMS, this system might have been great for you for this stage of your business. You're beyond it. And it's difficult to understand. when you're beyond those points. So it is, that's where those masterminds, all these other conversations that you can have with other property managers in the space are great because you can get some learnings of,

oh, I'm at 35 properties now and I don't feel like this system is quite working for me. Is there anything that you know that is a better solution? And I think we are really good in this space about understanding. You're not competing for that person one to one, even for a home. I mean, the likelihood that you're going to go one to one and lose or win, or that's not what it's all about, but the ability to say, yes, that system, this is where I found the issues,

this is where I had my breaking points. And again, understanding that at some point, you will need to invest more on your business. You will need to invest more on your technology so that those external constraints are as limited as you can control. Right. I mean, ultimately, the way I think about it is you want the software to work with you. You don't want to be fighting the software on a daily basis. If you are, it's a constraint, you should clean it up. If it's, hey, you've got the right tools and do you always want a little bit of more functionality, a little bit more things customized to you, of course, but is it limiting you? Is it stopping you from getting the next tier? In some cases, like you've identified, yes, but in many cases, I would say it's not. So I think

it's just worthy of note. And then, yeah, you know, kind of, you know, your mileage may vary, as it were. So let's add to the next one here. This is a quick one. We don't say the age word, by the way, Ed Felton Rule, both on this podcast and in buildup Bookings Parlance, we don't ever say the H word,

but name storms, we'll say it that way. Climate threats, you know, anything climate-wise. We've had a client, we had a client a while ago that got impacted about wildfire.

We had a client that lost a season of a few years back to red tide in Florida on the Florida beach just killed the demand for it. Obviously, we don't even need to mention the C word, you know, that killed a lot of people's businesses

for a little while. Hawaii, you know, was dealt a death blow by, you know, by people not traveling for the virus, right? So there's so many things there. again, is any of this in your control? Can you do anything about it?

Probably not, but I think it's just worth noting of just like at any given moment, like weird environmental things can happen, a name storm, an H-word, a, you know, a wildfire, the horrible floods that happen in Texas. I mean, all these things can happen and they're heartbreaking in some situations, but certainly they're going to impact demand. So I don't know if you have anything else to add in there. But yeah, just worthy of note here. Like that's a constraint that you may be dealt with whether you like it or not,

and you just have to deal with it and try to get to the next piece after that. I think it puts an emphasis on sustainability of your business. It's where are those breaking, where are those sustainability breaking points and not just like waste and water updates. It's really about making sure that you're able to take precautions and do these things. You know, keep safety in mind there. So I think that the less we talk about it, the less likely it is to happen. So let's move on.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. That's, again, get a reason why we don't say the HR in this podcast. We can maybe say that when the calendar year flips over in January. We can say it then, or we're not going to say it from now to them. All right, so the last two that we had here, I think this is worthy of, you know, maybe a bit of a discussion here. Then we're kind of coming to a close in these last two. So information communication constraints, okay, and then time and focus.

I see them as kind of related because in my mind, this is, if we put them in a bucket, it would be like your strategy, maybe your constraint, how you actually have set up your team, how that team interacts, maybe you've got the right people. But if you're giving them the wrong direction and they're not working in a very effective or efficient way. I absolutely have seen this be the constraint in so many different companies, right, where, you know, the rates and revenue people are doing their thing, the marketing people are doing their thing. Never the Twain shall meet. They never discuss. They never meet anything. They never talk. I have many clients where this is the case. There's not much communication

going on between, let's say, the owner liaison or the property manager that deals with the owner and the actual owner themselves. They have journey issues. So it's, you know, it's hard to sum it up in one thing. But, you know, the outline the best we could come up with is information communication constraints. And I think a lot of these things, you know, pop up over and over again. And they cause these, you know, fundamental issues that create more churn or create more negative reviews. Hey, I put in the ticket for this person to go fix that issue. They didn't do it. That's not my fault. You know, this kind of stuff happens. So maybe it's a software issue. Maybe it's a people issue. Sometimes it's just like a process issue. Like, and I know that that's a very popular thing to say

in the small business world, you just need better processes. And like, I think that a lot of that hype can be overdone in some situations because it's just like, so many situations have nuance to them. And like, we could have a process, but then clients are going to bust out of that process very quickly of as far as like, oh, I never had someone asked me that before. I had a ping bar before I hopped on here where a client wanted to say a timesheet for work that we were done done in this particular account. And I was like, we don't track time. So like, there is no time sheet for review because I don't, I don't track time to look at it from a scope perspective. So they were asking for something that we couldn't do. But my CSM had

no idea how to handle that question because she'd never been asked that before about a time sheet because we don't have time sheets. So that's a good example of just information communication. You could have a process for it, but people are going to bust through that process. So, you know, anything to, I'm sure you have a lot of things that you can add in here, but information communication as the problem in the business and why it's not growing. I think of working in an office. We don't have the hotel storefront where that's how people book. Like, that's it is you don't have to go to the lobby for vacation rental.

You know, there are still some that have standalone offices and things like that. But I do think that that contributes, the fact that we are out in the field. I mean, how many times have you heard that this phrase out in the field, looking at this, looking at that, doing all these things. There's something to be said for having that out in the field communication, having those standards of maybe you don't work in an office, maybe you're not doing, checking all these things, you're not on your computer all the time, but having those standards. I think that that's important to establish and develop and hold strong to because we talk

about specifically the information communications constraints. That's a big thing. I mean, that is something where ultimately, It's a bit of a choice. Like we are choosing not to communicate. We are choosing not to, we can say, overcomplicate things. But when it was in an office setting, and again, different scenarios, everything like that, more often than not, a lot of people want to know.

They may not remember it. They may not be critical to their job, but they at least want to stay informed. So like the concept of, oh, we don't want to overcomplicate things for you, so we're just going to get you focus in this area. it creates pretty dramatic silos and silos that are very hard to get out of. So when we're thinking about, man, it's hard, how do you set up those standards? How do you live with those standards and really be that person? Because also, the owners of these businesses are super busy.

And it's very difficult to keep up with that communication. And when the head of the business doesn't have the best communication skills or that's an opportunity to work on, Well, everybody else feels like that's kind of a pass that we don't need to hold to that same standard. And, I mean, I think if anybody is doing a realistic SWAT analysis, weakness is almost always, communication is almost always a weakness. Even with the most communicative teams in the world, it could still be better. It could still, you know, there's still gaps. So I think being able to acknowledge those and try to find a strategy, yeah.

I mean, just, you know, whether it's timely check-ins, things like that, just making sure that the whole team and feel open, you've hired these people, you've hired these teams, these individuals, there's a reason for that. You put their trust in them to be a part of your business, put your trust in them to communicate to them and give them maybe not everything that maybe a little more than they need to know in some cases, because I do think that that will help, you know, that it helps the whole operational system. And I think it probably has a long-term impact on the guest experience as well. Yeah. I think about it my own small business and I feel like in a way what we do is kind of similar to what our clients do in some former fashion.

like we have clients that are property managers, they have clients who are the homeowners in many situations, the differences they have a guest and they're trying to sit in the middle. We don't have that same dynamic in our business. But, you know, one thing that I wish for the AI future and maybe we'll get this sorted at some point in the near future is tell me the people that are quiet right now. Because if we're talking about every day or every other day, and things are generally good, I don't worry about those at all for my personal perspective. So if a homeowner calls you once a week at once every other week, oh, I just had a quick question about this. And oh, yeah, by the way, we were at the property a few weeks ago and everything looks

great. You don't worry about that relationship or that situation, right? The one you worry about is one that says nothing, you hear nothing from for an extended period of time. I'm not talking two weeks and talking two months. That's concerned. That's always a red flag in my mind. And then number two is the one where they're talking and they're talking negatively, right? It's like the ping before I hopped on here. Show me your time sheet.

That sort of thing. I'll be honest. That's not great. You know, a great question to get from a client, particularly if they're not happy with a deliverable that they got, obviously. So same kind of thing, right? Maybe you got them five bookings in a row. But if they went to the home and stayed in it and the couch is destroyed, like that's

going to be a negative, you know, that's going to be a negative phone call no matter what, regardless of that there's other positive things. Hey, what about that nice check? I just sent you. Yeah, but the couch is destroyed. And that was my favorite couch. Like, that can be a bit of an issue. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more than there.

But, you know, all that brings us nicely, I think, to a close here, Paul, on the final one that we had in our outline, which is time and focus on the end of the day, no matter what your constraint actually is. So many of the things we talked about, so to kind of recap maybe here before we go into this, it could be financial. So you don't just don't have enough money to spend on marketing, to spend all the investments and all the improvements you want to make in your business. It could be resource, which is most like. time, you know, that's the most common one, but that can also be a bit of a seasonality of the business. That's, that's a key part of it. It could be your technology. It could be your data. I don't know the right information. I don't know the right tech that I'm working with. It could be people. I don't have the right people on my team or I've got people

on my team aren't executing the way I want them to. It could be brand, sales and marketing. It could be I'm not getting the word out. People are not aware of my company. It could be those things. It could be things that we'll just kind of put this generally in the bucket of like completely outside your control, which is like market constraints, demand constraints, the macro economy that you have no control over, H word, storms, you know, all these things that you have no control over. It could be the market itself, man, we're just shrinking. We're not growing right now. We're seeing less arrivals year over year. We have a limited amount of permits. We only get so many homes. We talked about that a little bit today. It could

be hiring, you know, not having to be able to find new people. So let's say you have people in your team you want to get rid of. You can't get rid of them. It could be any number one of those things, right? And all the things we talked about last few minutes. But at the the end of the day, the number one constraint in most small businesses, including my own team feel like at times, is me. I'm the constraint. I can only take myself, you know, 40 hours a week, 40, 50 hours a week, most weeks, and do what I want to do. And if the founder and the executive team is stretched thin, and they're always putting on fires and dealing with, you know, they're dealing with daily emergencies, then obviously everything else becomes a little

bit harder. So I can, I get sympathized with this one because if I could self-diagnose myself, this is my own problem, if you will, is just having enough time to do everything you want to do, having the focus to do is you want to do. And I think the only effective antidote that I found recently that's helped me make some progress, you know, over the past few weeks or so and really last few months or so, maybe I should say, is working on one thing at a time. So I may recognize that there is 10 fires burning in my business, any given moment in time. And I try to think, what can I actually do about some of these fires that are burning? And in some cases, the answer is nothing, because I have to focus on one thing at a time, get that right.

And then I can focus on my next constraint and work on the next thing. So that's kind of my manifesto to, you know, bring us so close here. You're trying to grow your consultancy and do more work on your side. What do you kind of see as this, you know, in your situation? because you're in a little bit of a different boat, so I'd love to hear your perspective. Everybody's got a limited amount of time, a finite amount of time. And that's something that, without more people, you don't add more time to the clock there. But I do.

I think that understanding where your focus needs to be, it can be very difficult to learn as a leader here. And because, and I think with a lot of the businesses we work with, these founders have grown these businesses from very small levels. So they do. They, in some cases, they were probably the constraint. They didn't realize it. There was other factors within here, but they were a constraint. And I think that as you identify where your focus needs to rest, hey, my focus, I am best served in helping create memorable experiences for my owners, for my guests, or I'm better

at the numbers. I can make numbers sing, whatever that is, I think that is, as you're really, as you're really growing and scaling a business, it is understanding where your focus needs to be. And I am, I will tell you, I am at the infant stages of that. And that's something that I am not so eager to learn, but that's a reality of what needs to happen over the next months and years and hopefully decades beyond that. So that is the most difficult thing about some of these businesses, they're not businesses for people.

They're kids, they're families. This is, and by right, I mean, they've literally built. with their families. So it's not just that it feels like that. It is truly a piece of them, a part of them. And I think that the time constraint is what it is. But the focus constraint is that that makes that focus constraint very difficult because this has been your focus. Maybe in spite of some other thing, you know, family long way and things like that. But once you have developed, once you've established that, and once you can step away, and start to identify those focus constraints.

And all the other constraints, I think, begin to become more obvious. They become visible at least. I mean, maybe they're hidden before a little bit when the focus constraint is a bigger problem. But take that out, broaden that out, and you do start to understand. It's a communication thing. It's a money thing. We've got to get more money. It's a marketing.

It's a sales thing. It's a homeowner thing. But I think that's the one item where probably the most difficult to assess, certainly probably to self-assess, but if you're willing to kind of have someone look behind the curtain and peek behind the curtain and give you those insights, I think this last one is probably the one that can help you have the most impact long-term on the business too. Yeah, I agree. And I think this is why small business is hard, is that it requires a heck of a lot of judgment

and you don't have all the information. You may, you may think you own the company and I own my own company and I think I have a lot of the information, but I don't have all of it. And I tend to, you know, times over the years, I've made the wrong decision or invested on the wrong thing or brought on the wrong person or I've made every mistake in the book. I feel like at this point, right? And I realize that that's what makes it hard, you know, is like you might make the wrong decision and it sets you back eight months.

You know, I'm my wife wasted four months doing that. And then four months it took me to figure out to then let go that project or let go that person or stop doing that thing. Now I'm back to where I started nine months ago. that's frustrating, you know, and then it's like, I'm, heck, I might have even made negative progress. I might have lost a few clients along the way or in the vacational manager sense. I might have wasted a bunch of money on an agency that didn't deliver. I might have, you know, signed a few homeowners that ended up churning that I spent a bunch of time getting

their properties ready. And I only got a few thousand commissions. I was a waste of time. And it's just hard. So, you know, we're empathetic. You've made all the way the end of part two. I'm empathetic. I'm supportive of you. And I just got one favor to ask you. It's a constraint in our business right now a little bit, Paul, our little co-venture here, which is hosting the heads and bed show. We don't have enough reviews. We know. there are tens of thousands of you that have downloaded the podcast episodes, but not many of you actually leave reviews. So if you could do one favor for us before you get out of here today, go ahead to your podcast app at choice iTunes where we get the most downloads. Spotify, we get the second

most downloads there. So click on the little podcast app there that you're listening to probably right now. Go to the show page. Click five stars, leave review. We super duper appreciate that because we'll be back and better than ever with new episodes coming up with some of those topics and some of those ideas. And a review helps us gets us motivation to get us out of bed and hit the record button and get some awesome stuff to you guys. So thanks so much. Have an awesome rest of your day. Thank you. We appreciate you. And congrats again to John Rom for winning the open chance. A phenomenal day.