Scaling to over 200 STR Units in just a few years

0:02we wanted to know where we really wanted to focus our growth though was it new Bron Falls Texas was it fredburg we didn't want to pick both they're about an hour and a half apart two really great destinations we chose fredburg because at the time it was was very unregulated a lot more opportunity to grow new brum's had a lot of restrictions to shortterm minals already at the time that's why we chose we chose fredicksburg and fredicksburg was also a yearr round Market you know the weather is pretty consistency round there's about 80 to 100 wineries that are here the number one state parks here so it's every single weekend there's just guest it's very few during the weekdays Sunday Monday and Tuesdays but it's just a consistent very few seasons in terms of the rental so that's that's a big reason why why we chose it here and what

0:50We also noticed was we knew where we could Market we knew that our customers were coming from Dallas Houston Austin San Antonio and that's both from guest and the homeowners that's now changed since Co a lot of outside investment has been coming but we knew that that's where we had to focus prior like you said our hair was on fire because how can we do marketing appropriately and have an homeowner acquisition plan when we're a small business that's operating across seven different markets four major cities and each City designates itself to a different you know like when we're in Orlando you're how do you Market directly to people you can because it's just anyone everyone coming from all over the world where here in fredburg we know who our customer actually is and where they're

1:38Coming from over and over again and so we we we put a lot of investment into homeowner acquisition strategies you know handwritten cards buying databases you know going understanding all the homes we know we we classified every home A B and C categories of what we wanted to manage would send out handwritten cards handwritten gifts talk about you know yes we're new but that you know we are local things like that we put a lot of investment into the homeowner acquisition and with we did that right before covid and things paused about three months but then that paid off that people remembered us from everything that we had sent they you know they were frustrated with their manager during covid or you know however that occur but it just fueled the investment and then people

2:26Were at home I think just looking for investment opportunities and that's what fueled that market but it was you know there's challenges that I've learned every level me going from I already had the experience of getting up to 100 units and we were essentially rebuilding a business here locally but going from you know 50 to 100 here then 100 to 150 every 50 there's these big benchmarks that you have to break through and there's ceilings that you hit from Staffing challenges to your operational challenges people but the growth it really was quick we weren't expecting you know we were looking to grow at about 25 to 50 a year so going you know the last two years we've signed on just in a row but 220 homes in the last two but

3:16We really built out all of our operations to support that finally and we have all of the right people I mean we just celebrated four folks yesterday is a three year anniversaries with us and building out that culture those systems so it's been you know for a little while we were kind of drinking from a fire hose with with the the co growth and we made the mistake the already said you know there's there's hey you know bigger means this great better quality life it doesn't at all it's all about the quality of what we have in terms of our people our homeowners our homes where our Niche is and staying with that and never diverting from that but it it it's been a wild Journey from 2019 going that amount of that amount of unit count and the biggest challenge

4:04Though that we've had that and that I've had to grow into as a leader is it's all about people I we have I can go on for hours about our Tech stack and the technology and what you know proprietary stuff that we've built and coded and how all of our technolog is integrated and I understand that entire ecosystem that's great but none of this works without people and so that has been our biggest challenge is having the right people to support the business that we've built and we've done an amazing job at that and that's something I'm truly proud of yeah then that's that's the Lynch pin for most companies is is the right people and so I'd love to hear more about that like so of the 40 people that you have what are those roles and then 220 220 units in the last two years

4:53I mean that's two or three properties a week coming in every single week so what does that process look like and how are those 40 people involved in that process when you onboard a new a new property yeah so so we run our whole about two and a half years ago we we said how can we operate more efficiently how can we really build a robust system that isn't just silid around departments and really bring agile type management and communication into our business and we heard a lot of you know other companies in operational spaces whether it's HVAC whether it's Plumbing whether it's other management companies implementing a system called EOS which stands for entrepreneur operating system and it it's

5:41And I've had a lot of arguments people in the past well isn't it just similar to this system and that really it's just a system that your whole company buys into and every individual is engaged into that sets everyone's goals tracks all their metrics or kvis and it instills accountability and it it allows transparency across the entire Enterprise of your company and that everyone knows what success looks like and when someone is not successful it allows you to understand that either a the person's in the wrong seat and let's put them in the right seat of your company or B they don't need to work here anymore and so our whole company runs on that system all 40 of us from everyone from every single role all the way down to you know people always want to put cleaners at the bottom of the total pole for us they're just as important everyone is just as important at every single role all have something

6:30That offers to the business so everyone's engaged into it and so every framework is of our company is is from myself who's the leader of the company says my wife and then our integrator and kind of chief operations officer now his name is Scott Heyman he manages all of our teams and so under the teams you've got Finance you've got you business development you've got operations you've got customer experience and all those departments go all the way down to customer service owner Communications listing and onboarding teams technical teams you've got cleaning maintenance laundry all going up to operations so everyone knows where their seat is at any given time in

7:18This framework and each team meets once a week they have one meeting a week where they go over all the to-dos everything to the biggest thing that about that meeting is it's just to solve the issues that are preventing them from being successful or preventing our customers being successful there an hour and a half meeting for each person in the company once a week to bring issues to the table and solve them and so when you talk about 40 people every week that is what you're talking 160 issues you know at a minimum getting solved per month and you quantify that by 12 every year we're solving critical over thousand issues that are hampering our business or someone's job to be successful this a little high level of how we operate and how everyone is is built into their role

8:07In their department but customer the Bey about the system is we use a software called my 90 customer service someone customer service knows exactly what I'm working on and what my priorities are and what my goals are that quarter they know what I did last week they know so it's it's all all the silos are broken down and everyone understands the role they're in and what success is supposed to look like for them the next 13 weeks out every 13 weeks wow and so it's been a really great system to implement I didn't learn all this overnight we brought in a whole consultant from the US worldwide program to help us implement this it's the best investment that I've ever made as a business owner to date that has nothing to do with software or people or salaries it's a theory and you just have to implement it

8:56The framework's there and you just got to follow it and then when it comes to the onboarding that's a we we have my focus of the company the day-to-day is the culture and then I focus on you business development kind of the big picture deals so I still do a lot in the business development I love working with our clients our people and I also I get a sense of gratitude knowing when we sign on an owner that they're going to have an amazing experience at their team and and so the confidence is there and if we've impr proven that we've built our onboarding process over the years we struggled for probably say here in Texas for the first year and a half or so ref finding our onboarding process how to handle that you know that growth we went through a lot of people

9:45You to get the right people in those teams but we know that every every house that we sign on if all the steps are done in terms of their construction everything we know we're going to on board them in 3 weeks or or less and the average is about 2 weeks in terms into our services so we have teams dedicated to getting those homes up at a such a high you you you're talking about photos smart locks installs all the connections testing building listings there's a ton that goes on but we have an agile meeting every morning those teams because it's all about communication internally so we have a meeting that's 15 minutes every single morning of what's being on board at that day what steps are to do and going down our checklists of where things are at we have an onboarding meeting once a week but each morning it's so critical that your onboarding operations teams speak together and so

10:34It's just takes a lot of communication but also takes people who are trained in their role on what their daily job is to get those units you know on board it or List it but we were doing about you know 20 to 30 homes a month for two years we've cut that back we're only we we're only going forward doing about five per month and they have to be the the right homes the right home owners so we have cut back our onboarding significantly to ensure that we're getting the right quality of homes and that we're focusing solely on the quality going for it but there's just a lot of people make this work but I think the key is it's the right people