The Importance of Maintaining Brand Fluidity

Keeping brand fluidity. Now this is one of the things that places like Marriott Hotels do really well. If you go and stay in one Marriott hotel, it will be very similar when you go and stay at others. And it's something which is so, so important for hospitality in general, but it's really hard to replicate as short term rental owners. So what we're going to be doing is discussing today how to keep that brand fluidity. And here to help us with that question is an awesome short term rental host, somebody who has got over short term rental units based across in the USA and is going to help us really understand how you can keep that consistency throughout your short term rentals. So today my name is Liam Carolan and this is the Boostly podcast. If you've not listened to this before, that gives you the tools, the tactics, the trainings, most importantly the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. And every few episodes we dive into a host's journey and that's exactly what we're doing today. We've got AJ Raber and he's from BNB Breeze Co. So if you go and check their website out, it's absolutely awesome. As I say, he's got over 80 units who's well placed to, to give us some help today on our journey. So Let me introduce A.J. welcome along.

Well, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

So many people listening to this might not be familiar with your brand and your business. So what I'd love to ask is can you give yourself an introduction where your business is in the world and anything you'd like to share?

Yeah. So our business started with guy named Landon Schlabad in North Carolina who was well connected with a lot of different investors and that's actually been interesting. Our company's grown through investor relations, not post mailing, going after owners. It's been through just nurturing relations and once you prove it once to a homeowner, they want to invest again. So we have homes anywhere from Pennsylvania, up in the mountains, Poconos, everywhere outside of Pittsburgh, Amish country, Lancaster down to, down the east coast, down to Sarasota, Florida. So kind of just grew due to our, where our investors were going in and where they wanted their vacation homes. And it's, it's actually grown since 2019 when Landon would have brought, got the first company, first property started. Then I actually would have joined in 2020, no, 2021 and kind of just went from there. Have a little bit of a background in corporate sales and marketing and so knew that it's not what I wanted and transitioned in this space and it's been really awesome ever since.

That's cool. That's cool. And so what is your role today within the company? What, what is, how does your day to day look?

As a lot of people who have short term rentals could know, it's not, it's very non corporate style. So like the days of like you're in charge of this task forever is just very. We. Everybody wears a lot of hats. I think I, there's a titles for everybody but we just do a little bit of everything. So that's one of the things I like about this company is all the systems that run the back end. So I'd be, I'd be over a lot of the systems. A lot of the software is just making things better, making things smoother so that certain people can focus in their roles better.

That's cool. That's cool. And you mentioned you've got sort of a corporate background. What did you do before this? What was your previous life?

Yeah, so I worked in sales and marketing for a custom manufacturer in South Carolina. So dealt with reaching OEMs, reaching companies who are building products and I would travel for trade shows, meeting them in person, kind of just anything to get out. And as a kid, I mean I was a kid, I'm still a kid, it was really nice just to get out, explore the country, meet with a lot of these people who are a lot older than me and get experience into it which is poured over into talking to investors, talking to people just breaking out of comfort zones and so just medical sales and marketing is my background.

That's cool. That's cool. And you mentioned just before you went live you're actually staying in a short term rental at the moment. So yeah, you get to experience it from a guest point of view as well as a owner point of view.

I know my, my wife's a travel nurse which has proved awesome. I definitely married the right one for a lot of different reasons. It doesn't hurt that she's a travel nurse. So actually when I broke free from my corporate job, we were going to be taking this leap to travel around, stay three months here, three months there. So we've almost been a year on the road right now. Been in Nashville as well. Now we're out in Iowa. So getting to stay in Airbnb deal with actually we've been dealing with a lot of like medium term hosts as well, furnish finder type stuff and just it's nice to get out and see other cities and what's going on. Just every time you stay in Airbnb, you take some little notes back to you to bring it to your own.

So I know we're going to be talking about brand fluidity and how to how to really produce consistent results across the units. But before we do, obviously you get to stay in a lot of units. You've got experience with midterm rental hosts. What advice would you have for anybody out there who's looking to get in the midterm space? What are some of the things which you've either had frustrations about that certain properties don't have, or the things that you've loved, which they do have, which would make you use these properties again?

So when it comes to short term, I I'm a huge fan of going all out flashy, appealing. It's marketing for medium term, I'm it's completely opposite for me. So practicality, logic, what works. And so like comfortable places to work if you can have a nice spend a little maybe the money that you would have spent on a hot tub and some of these others, nice office chair, nice desk, big refrigerators, big couches, comfortable beds, king beds, TVs and bedrooms because they'll be spending more time there. So like take all the things that you'd want in your personal house and, and put in this home. It doesn't have to be the one that has the $5,000 article couch and all this everywhere but functionality is at the the the root of all midterm rentals.

Nice. Nice. Thank you for that Share on that. So obviously we're here to talk about the brand fluidity, the 80ish units that you've got at the moment. First of all, how do you keep them consistent considering there's ones in different locations and also perhaps different you might be serving slightly different guest avatars, different size groups. What what is the key to keeping fluidity and consistency?

And first, you're right it that's been one of our biggest struggles is when you have a home that sleeps 30 in the mountains of Pennsylvania in a apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. Very different people. And so it's you're not marketing to the same avatar. However, one of the ways that we found that works to keep everything fluid is to have really good backend systems. So like really good information for our communications teams, really good automated messages that are taking care of everything and spending time not just hey, hope you checked in, hope everything's great like spending time customizing things, taking care of guests, checking in on them at the homes, going above and beyond with their experience. So like there's never a guest that would check into a home in Virginia, in Florida that would be getting a different experience from us. The same type of communication, it'd be the same thing like when you go to Chick Fil A, you talk to somebody, you're going to see that same kind of verbiage coming from them as you would anywhere across the country. And that's what we're trying to do.

Nice, nice. And you mentioned some of the systems. So let's dive into the tech, the systems and some of the cool, I guess apps and things that you use. What are they and why do you use them?

So the first that this is not a flashy one. We store all of our data just in Google Drive and have everybody source to whoever needs to see it. Some of our other data, like our tech stack that we really like is Stayfi for collecting emails. Thanks Boostly Mark Simpson. That's been a big one. Key data. So data analytics, that's been a really nice one just to plug into our company. Pull out owner reports, you can see adrs, your rev pans, occupancy rates are super easy for any given amount of time. Guest view guide is another one that we just merged with. So I forget they're probably like two by three foot live screens that you put in your walls. That's another way that we keep brain fluidity. Every time somebody clicks on this, there's a video of US3, Me, Heather and Landon, some in our company saying welcome to our home and giving them kind of a little bit of a 30 second rundown of who we are. Every single home that has one of these gets the same video and then when they're done watching that video on the screen it says shows our website a discount code to rebook and that's a way that you can retarget Airbnb guests once they get to your home. Another tech stack would be we use Breezeway for our cleanings. The fact that I don't know how to use Breezeway shows that it works if if I don't know how to use it doesn't need fixing. One thing that's been really nice lately, even it's not a tech stack, just build a new custom website that's just been performing really, really well. And it's very our old one was pre built with a PMS and to get to a home was not the easiest thing. And now we just every filter, every icon, every how everything's set up, we would have brainstormed on why we want to do this and the guest experience. So like we spent the last year, we actually, we haven't gained that many homes this last year. But it's because going this year we realized we wanted to pause, we were growing fast and get all these systems in place automations so that we can give a smoother experience for the guests going forward.

I love that. I mean there's, there's a lot to break down which you've shared there. And thank you for all those awesome pieces of tech. The first thing I want people to really focus on out of that is you've personalized that guest day. So using those guest guide.

Was it called a guest view guide?

Guest view guide. So using that you've got actually something which they can click inside the unit and actually they get to see their hosts, you know, a short video and that's consistent across the brand. That's so important. And what I'd love people listening into this to be thinking about is how can you add that personalization? Because by having that personalization of showing exactly who the host is and introducing yourself, you can then get a higher. People are more likely to give you a better review for a start, because people buy from people but then also like you say, whichever one they check in, they can go, oh, I remember these guys. I remember the video from, from the last one. So yeah, that's, that's really cool. I like that.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering. How, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O O s t l y.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team to play.

On what you just said. Actually, at the conference in Nashville a couple weeks ago, Bill Faith was sharing about those personal touches also make it easier to bounce back when something goes wrong. So like instead of when something goes wrong, instead of them just responding to a corporate company wanting their money back, they're dealing with AJ or they're dealing with Landon and they have already established a personal rapport with them. So just it makes going through the hard times already on a better foot rather than trying to play catch up.

Nice, nice. And you mentioned that there was the consistency across the guest side of things. Do you have that consistency when you're onboarding as well? Because across the 80 homes, I guess that's taken quite a lot of, lot of effort and a lot of work. How does it work onboarding with you guys? And what has been the success to getting so many so fast to this, this growth that you've been able to, to. To do?

All right, just speaking on the onboarding first, the way that we've been able to not go crazy with onboarding is we have one person in charge of that experience from a lot of the A to B and, and having the same documents. So like we've put SOPs in place with it that we could onboard somebody tomorrow and somebody random could do it and walk themselves through it. Now it's not that easy all the time as you know. But like in theory all of our documents would show from A to B. And Heather, who's in charge of this has been so good at even like literally button click here, button click there, go here, go there, add this. And so just making, where everything's not living in our heads and so that we know the homeowners, we tell them this is what we need in the homes. We actually, we furnish homes as well and so just we do the same thing every time over and over.

Nice, nice. And again that's that brand consistency and it makes it easier for your team and for you to do so. The term I wanted to just check back on there is SOPs which not everybody in the UK may be familiar is. But standing operator procedures. Is that correct? Is that what it is?

Yes, yes.

And like you say, just getting most businesses, especially short term rental businesses, and they are businesses, most of the procedures live in the owner or the, you know, the CEO's head, don't they? Where that is where they are and getting those out on paper or onto, you know, a system, onto a Google Drive such as yourself is just so important. So it's a great tip for anyone listening, especially if you are in those early days of under 10 properties, just get that stuff down into some sort of drive where other people can follow it. It's just so important.

And what's important with that is like this industry is scalable. If you had those in place so like there's money to be made when compounding the same effects and like those, those SOPs can help the owners step out and start reaping benefits. And by putting people in place.

That's cool. That's cool. And in terms of the team that you've got on the ground doing this sort of thing, you mentioned you use breezeway. Do you have. Who uses breezeway? Is it the, you know, do you have maintenance people in different locations and if so, how do you find them?

Yeah, so because we have remote, remote locations either homeowners, we like for homeowners to find their maintenance person on the ground. Now if they don't, we do so like in populated areas that we have more than five homes, we already have the same plumbers, handyman, maintenance, pool guys, cleaners, and we just plug them into the system. However, if there is a homeowner that, if they bought a house in Utah right now, we don't have anybody there. A lot of that. We, we like for them to find relationships on the ground because it is their home and they'll be having that for a long time. But who's in charge of that? And our. We internally we would have a full time person that's over maintenance and cleaner relations and we're actually expanding this, possibly bringing on another person to do this. That's one thing we found for, for certain people in the business to be able to focus on increasing revenue, bringing on owners and all the like stuff in the business that's increasing in value. You can't be worrying about a lot of the day to day problems that are going up. So like outsourcing that, bringing on good people that can think for themselves and tackle those problems is an amazing key. And then she would deal directly with us. But yeah, we have. Were you asking about company structure? Like how we have people doing what. Is that what you were asking as well?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

All right, so then we'd have our CEO who would deal with a lot of the. Just overseeing who still stays very involved and is in the process of branching out. We'd have Heather, who's over in charge of onboarding and design. It's good. Onboarding and design go hand in hand because you're buying furniture, you're starting at properties. We have a photographer, we have one of our. This is one of their favorite things that we have, a listing optimizer. So we used to always go in like whenever you play with a listing on Airbnb and you boot. I don't know exactly how the algorithm works. However, we notice when you make changes, bookings come in like it just, it's. If we Go edit a listing that hasn't been touched. Almost guarantee the next week, two bookings will come in just by changing titles. So, like, we usually like to go back and forth, like have two revolving titles. And so our listing optimizer just plays with listings, goes into them, changes them, updates them, plays around. And usually those homes that they follow with do see an increase. And that's actually. That's been a probably. We've had pretty good ROI on that position because of that. One of the biggest things that we did then was having a. A va. VA team. So we have a team of five that's handling our communications and that has made all of our hair not fall out. So that's been a really good growth in the last year.

I really like the idea of the optimizer. They're just going in, swapping titles. And you're absolutely right that when you make these changes to the listings, the algorithm seems to pick up and you get bookend. So actionable stuff, which people can go and do from the back of this. So if you're listening to this, just make a quick note, just change the title in your Airbnb listing and let us know. Just send us a message if you get a book. And just from making a few changes. Because this is the thing that we take it for granted that, that people know this stuff, whereas it's just so important to. To keep the. The basic stuff keep going. And that's that consistency that you. That you've mentioned at the start, which is not just for the guest stay, but it sounds as though you're consistent for actually how you manage the listings, which is. Which is cool. So what does the future hold for the business?

The future. Right now, we went into this year wanting to make our systems perfect. And so our future is now finishing wrapping that up. We're actually, right now made the mistake of waiting too long to integrate to a new pms, which, as you know, is a lot of work starting all over. So once our pms, once our system, like, we focused on making our guest experience, right, the booking process right, having a marketable website that we can point people to and be confident in, which has been amazing just to be able to send somebody a link and say, book now, and trust that they're going to have the same experience there as they did on Airbnb. And so that's what we spent a lot of time on. So once our systems are all incorrect, then the time is to bring in more. So, like the same systems that can hold 80 homes for us should be able to hold 150 homes once they're built correctly. So that's like getting everything set and then you can scale.

Yeah, that's. Somebody described it to me as in have little checkpoints. So grow, have a little check in and you know, change, make sure everything's working as it should, then grow and have little checkpoint again. So. And that sounds as though that's what you're doing.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint and then for 101 marketing tactics, that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now just type in Book Direct Playbook or the book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

Can I ask, you mentioned you're moving software. So can we dive into the weeds there and find out who were you with and who you move to and why?

So not going to throw anybody on the under the bus because people might be having a great opportunity with them and I don't want to that how we are moving to streamline. And, and so they, they've been consistently showing us that they're one of the top people in the game. They are constantly innovating and they have a lot of it. It works, it's, it doesn't look like it's crazier, flashier than everything we've ever seen before, but it works. And we keep hearing that, we keep seeing that. And so like our system runs on that PMS and so we're very excited to transition. It is, it's, it's a long process because you're starting all over, but it's one that's well worth it.

Nice. Nice. And what would your top tip be for, for the people looking to start now? So say they're now getting into this business. What would be your, your top tip for somebody if a friend was to turn to you go hey, I'm thinking about starting up an STR business. What would you say to them?

Go to invest. If you're wanting to have five homes, create your back end that would have 15 or 20 homes. Don't build your business for the amount of homes that you're going to have the next six months or you're going to redo everything. So like think about where you might be in a couple years and build for that. So like have the right PMS that will be able to hold those homes, have the right pricing software. I didn't even mention this earlier. We use beyond pricing and I'm unbelievable fan and so like take the time, spend the money to build and they will come. Don't try to cheapskate. Especially if I know, I know a lot of people. This wouldn't be normally hosts but people that just have their homes on Airbnb because it's easier. Like they handle your taxes, they're the merchant record. It's easier just to have homes and Airbnb like take the step. PMS have a website good in VRBO and some of these other channels. You never want all your eggs in one basket. And actually the biggest piece of advice besides that would be go to the conferences and shows even if you think you know what you're doing. So like some of the best money we've ever spent was just getting to talk to people this past. The past couple weeks ago when Mark was talking at short term rental wealth conference, we probably got 10x our ROI on what we spent to go there. And so just it's really good to be in front of people and collaborating with people who've been there.

Before I send this. The network, isn't it? You really build up your network so you never know who you're gonna, who you're gonna meet, who you're gonna talk to. Which is, which is cool.

Yeah.

So as we reach towards the, towards the end of these podcasts, we love to just do a couple of quick fire fun questions. So these aren't necessarily short term rental related, but can be if you want them to be. What would you say has been the best gadget or app that you've used within the last 12 months? What is something which you just really like?

App?

Yeah, it's something that you use in day to day life which you go, do you know what? That's awesome.

Well here I'm going to give you one that's kind of lame. I just recently upgraded to the Apple Computer Mini and going from a laptop to like having monitors with a keyboard out of the way just increases product instead of. I've always had laptop running two monitors but now having a full desk with no laptop in the way has been super nice.

Nice. Nice. I'm a big fan of Apple. So yeah, the Mini. The Mini is on the list to definitely get. What would you say is your skill or your kind of talent that's, that's unique to you. Where do you, what do you excel at?

Thinking from the customer shoes. So like being unbiased, thinking about what the majority of customers would want to do and what they would think when they see given circumstances. So kind of getting unbiased and getting in their shoes.

I like that. I like that a lot. So important, isn't it to, to be able to think like your consumer. And as you mentioned at the start, you are a consumer at the moment you're staying in the short term rental. So it's, you've got the experience with doing it. What would you say is. Been the best advice that you've ever had?

Actually here. This is one that I've heard in a story before that I really liked. Don't know if it's the best I've ever got, but it's something that stands out to me. The, the wisest man when on the wrong, when going on the wrong road is the one who turns around the fastest. So everybody thinks like keep pushing through, keep pushing through. But if you're on the wrong road, get off the road. And so like even I don't know how exactly that's pertainable to this business. But if you're, if you're going down the wrong, if you're seeing the wrong homeowners, you keep getting the homes that you don't want, but they're easy. Turn around and start over. Don't waste the next five years forcing something to happen that wasn't the right thing to happen.

Nice. Nice. Yeah. And there's definitely people who need to hear that at the moment. So yeah, thank you for that. What resources or books, podcasts, movies do you recommend that everybody listening go and check out? It can be short term rental related or it can just be something that you really enjoy.

Yeah, short term, I was starting. Short term would be. I'm not allowed to plug him on here, I feel like. But Mark Simpson's been a really big impact just following on social media as well as Bill Faith, other speaker at the show last week. Another guy that's been new, he's newer on the scene, he's all over YouTube is Dustin Baker makes really high quality YouTube videos that really goes into depth for Airbnbs that I really enjoy. The videos, they're really well done getting out of the short term rentals. By far my two favorite people I learned from would be Alex Hermizo. So he's. Are you familiar with him?

Yes, very much so. Big fan.

So Best life sales black and white person I've ever followed. The other one would be Cody Sanchez. So she's a lady involved in buying boring businesses. Like there's a lot of money to be made in things. Like for example, right now, Airbnb is flashy, everybody's in it, but there's a whole lot of businesses making money that nobody's thinking about and just kind of getting in, broadening your expectations of what you want to make money on. And, and there's a whole, there's a whole world out there besides what we know.

Nice. Nice. So thank you so much aj. This has been, been really fun and I, I really enjoyed first of all your energy for it, consistency, that brand fluidity that definitely flows through what you do. And also the advice shared on this. I just want people listening to Go and take action. Whether that is going to change the title or booking a network, an event to go and learn more or following some of these awesome people you've just mentioned at the end there, then you know that somebody takes some action, not just listen to this podcast and you know, sort of moves on to the next one. That is in the doing where the success comes, isn't it? So I'm going to throw the mic open. How can we find out more either about you or your business? Where do you want people who are listening to to go and check out?

So our website's a really good place to start. BNB Breeze Co. One thing that we really like here and even just we've researched a lot of other businesses when we made this. So feel free to take tips and make it even shoot us something that you see that you want to make better. But we spent time in the like who we are about us pages, how we operate, just to build out a website where owners can go and owners can see what kind of what they're going to get with us. Guests can see experiences and just see who our team is. So just it's a one stop landing page for our teams and that same domain would be our URL for all social medias. We're actually right now starting to push social media more. We've hired somebody to take over that and just be in charge of reels, bringing in content creators, collaborators just to grow the brand to help push direct bookings.

Nice. Nice. And we're a big fan of direct booking. So I've really enjoyed this AJ and if you listen to this on the Boostly podcast, we thank you. We know there's a lot of places you can put your attention I really thank you for putting it here. If you've got some value out of this and if you can do us a favor, either share it with a friend or like it, subscribe if you can as we really appreciate that and it helps boostly to help more people like yourself listening to this podcast. So I think that's it from us. AJ was there any last moment shares before we bring it to a close?

Nope. Last thing is just if you care about this industry, there's a lot of fun stuff that can go on. So like take the extra step, go all out, don't try to compare apples to oranges and be the apple and just be bolder than your competition.

Nice. Well, nice way to close. So thank you very much. That's it from me and that's it from aj. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.