Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / From ‘Host Hacking’ to Hospitality: Chad Harker on Scaling Vacation Rentals for Business Growth

Transcript

From ‘Host Hacking’ to Hospitality: Chad Harker on Scaling Vacation Rentals for Business Growth · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  We're probably a little bit more patriotic than we've ever been
• 0:02
  before. You notice a lot more Canadian
• 0:05
  flags flying. I think that's going to cause a
• 0:07
  lot of people to be travelling a lot more within Canada.
• 0:10
  Your dollar's not going as far as it would if you would travel
• 0:13
  to the States, and not a lot of people want to travel to the
• 0:15
  States to begin with anyways. Canadian travelers are shunning
• 0:18
  the States and holidaying at home.
• 0:21
  I wonder if you can work out why?
• 0:23
  Property Manager Chad Harker is the special guest on today's
• 0:26
  Host Planet podcast, listening to hear his take on tariffs,
• 0:30
  separate booking, social media and much more.
• 0:38
  Chad, welcome to the House Planet podcast.
• 0:39
  Thank you so much for joining us.
• 0:41
  What impact is Donald Trump and his tariffs having on the
• 0:46
  Canadian vacation rental market? Yeah, I get read into it.
• 0:49
  That's a good question. It's definitely the, the talk of
• 0:53
  pretty much everyone right now, including I was surprised to
• 0:56
  hear about how many people were talking about it in London and
• 1:00
  the UK. But I would say the biggest
• 1:03
  impact that we're going to see is a lot more Canadians and
• 1:09
  people traveling within Canada. Like I noticed it's, it's good
• 1:14
  and good and bad. I would say a lot of it's good
• 1:17
  because it's we're probably a little bit more patriotic than
• 1:20
  we've ever been before. Everyone's kind of sticking
• 1:23
  together. You notice a lot more Canadian
• 1:25
  flags flying and even in the grocery stores you see the
• 1:30
  things that are labeled. So I think that's going to cause
• 1:34
  a lot of people to be traveling a lot more within Canada,
• 1:37
  especially with the fluctuations in the currency their your
• 1:41
  dollar's not going as far as it would if you would travel to the
• 1:44
  States. And not a lot of people want to
• 1:45
  travel to the States to begin with anyway.
• 1:47
  So I think we're not going to have a huge impact.
• 1:51
  So if you're, you know, situated in a good area of the market,
• 1:55
  like a good metro market or closer to some of the beautiful
• 1:58
  mountain markets that we have here, you're probably going to
• 2:01
  do really well still so. And there's probably going to be
• 2:05
  an impact there on American hosts as well, who traditionally
• 2:09
  cater for a lot of Canadian tourists.
• 2:11
  I mean, we, we did a podcast recently with Sally Henry from
• 2:14
  Key Data and she was saying that Canadian tourists are not going
• 2:18
  to the States as much, but they are going to Europe and France.
• 2:21
  And like you were saying there, they're going to be holidaying
• 2:23
  closer to home. So there's an impact on a lot of
• 2:26
  different sectors here and IT and it doesn't really bode
• 2:29
  particularly well for for some people in the USI guess.
• 2:33
  Yeah, I would say you're absolutely right.
• 2:35
  I I'm very involved in not only like the short term rentals, but
• 2:38
  the investment community and notice a lot of people looking
• 2:41
  to sell their properties or vacation homes in the United
• 2:46
  States for that very reason. And the market in Canada is
• 2:50
  actually still fairly strong, like relative to a lot of the
• 2:54
  other major markets, we're still pretty affordable.
• 2:58
  You know, obviously you get into Vancouver and Toronto and some
• 3:01
  of the major areas, it could still be a little bit more
• 3:04
  pricey. But relative to a lot of the
• 3:07
  other spots, it's still, you're still in a great, great
• 3:10
  position. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of
• 3:13
  potential out there in in Canada.
• 3:15
  OK, real talk now for all you hosts out there, you know that
• 3:19
  moment when you guest messages you again with, hey, what's the
• 3:23
  Wi-Fi code? Or you're staring at 5 different
• 3:25
  calendars wondering if you've accidentally double booked the
• 3:28
  cottage. Yes, we've all been there.
• 3:32
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• 3:35
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• 3:38
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• 3:41
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• 3:45
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• 3:49
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• 3:51
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• 3:55
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• 3:59
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• 4:01
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• 4:05
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• 4:09
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• 4:21
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• 4:24
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• 4:27
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• 4:29
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• 4:34
  Let's talk a little bit about your STR journey then.
• 4:36
  When I met you in London, you said that you'd converted a
• 4:39
  property and turned it into several different units.
• 4:42
  So tell us about that. How do you get started?
• 4:45
  Yeah. So I would say several is a bit
• 4:48
  of a stretch, but definitely I don't know if the house hacking
• 4:51
  concept is like a popular thing where you are, but essentially I
• 4:57
  pretty much scraped up enough for a down payment on my first
• 5:00
  house and was going to go the very conventional route with
• 5:03
  just a long term renter. And we, I just did a lot of
• 5:08
  work. I'm sure a lot of people might
• 5:12
  be able to resonate with maybe not having a lot of skills, but
• 5:15
  just still had some determination and willing to
• 5:18
  make it happen. So I, and I also was kind of
• 5:21
  forced to because I didn't have a lot of the money or resources
• 5:25
  that I might have today. So it was a lot of figuring it
• 5:30
  out and we renovated the basement and the upstairs.
• 5:33
  Like the property was pretty, pretty beat up.
• 5:36
  Like, it's funny because I even when I purchased it, I still
• 5:40
  continue to live with my mom for the first couple months because
• 5:45
  it wasn't even very livable. But we did convert the basement.
• 5:50
  And then I actually started out just doing some rooms on Airbnb.
• 5:54
  And yeah, I wasn't sure how it would go.
• 5:57
  You know, I'm sure you've heard lots of horror stories and you
• 6:02
  know, how the media likes to portray us sometimes.
• 6:04
  So yeah, I thought the only way to know for sure was to give it
• 6:08
  a shot myself. And I was pretty astonished with
• 6:11
  how great it went with just one room.
• 6:13
  So I was like, wow, if one room was able to do this.
• 6:17
  Good. Why not do a whole property
• 6:20
  like, how would that go? So that's kind of how I got
• 6:24
  started into it. When you look back now, what are
• 6:28
  the biggest lessons learned from the early part of your journey?
• 6:34
  Well, there's definitely a few made a ton of mistakes at the
• 6:38
  start. I feel like probably the biggest
• 6:41
  lessons would be if you're able to surround yourself with the
• 6:46
  people that are where you would like to be or have achieved
• 6:50
  where you would like to, like what your end goals would be,
• 6:54
  that would drastically accelerate your growth.
• 6:57
  Like as soon as I started to get involved with some of the larger
• 7:01
  operators and hosts, I was that like some of the things that I
• 7:06
  was doing and they were like, oh, well, we've already been
• 7:08
  there, done that. That really helped me like cut
• 7:13
  out a lot of the mistakes that I would have made.
• 7:16
  So I wish I would have started that a little bit earlier on.
• 7:19
  However, I did get get into it shortly after I started so and
• 7:24
  the community's great. Like as you know, there's like
• 7:27
  tons of amazing people in this industry and everyone's very
• 7:30
  willing to help out. Like it's not maybe as like
• 7:35
  cutthroat or competitive, like there's lots of room for
• 7:38
  everyone to do very well so. What do you think the essentials
• 7:43
  are of delivering a really great guest experience?
• 7:46
  If if somebody came along to you and said, oh, you've been doing
• 7:49
  this hosting thing for a while, where do I start and how do I be
• 7:53
  a success at this? Yeah.
• 7:56
  I would say the number one is just with any business you got
• 8:00
  to have a incredible product if you don't have and it with this
• 8:05
  case that's your property. So if you don't have a good
• 8:07
  property to begin with, it's you know, it's not going to make the
• 8:11
  biggest difference if you have the best automation or the best
• 8:13
  systems or the best e-mail follow up.
• 8:16
  Because like for like a direct booking example, no one's going
• 8:20
  to want a direct book with you if you if they didn't have a
• 8:23
  great state to begin with. So I would say like just
• 8:26
  optimizing your property and really setting it up so people
• 8:30
  are having that fantastic experience and they want to they
• 8:33
  want to stay with you again. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
• 8:37
  And in relation to direct bookings and that you mentioned
• 8:40
  there, how do you go about trying to drive those direct
• 8:44
  bookings? Yeah.
• 8:46
  So after you check the box of having the amazing product, you
• 8:51
  got to make sure that you're they know that direct bookings
• 8:54
  are available because if they don't know about it, there's no
• 8:58
  chance they're going to try to book with you direct.
• 9:01
  So we have a few systems in place with our business.
• 9:05
  First of all, as soon as they walk in the door, they can see
• 9:08
  some. We have like a website as as you
• 9:12
  know, Mark, amazing guy, he helped us out with that.
• 9:16
  And we have like the all of the stuff in our guide guide book.
• 9:22
  We have some materials out at the property.
• 9:24
  So then especially I'm not like I'm sure you're aware now with
• 9:27
  the policy changes on Airbnb, they they don't, you can't be
• 9:31
  pushing anything out on the platform.
• 9:33
  So that's where I feel like you'll going back to the old
• 9:38
  school method with having some materials out at your property
• 9:40
  could go a long way. And it's the first thing people
• 9:42
  are gonna see when they come in the door and then having a great
• 9:46
  e-mail follow up after they stay.
• 9:49
  Yeah, 100%, yeah. I was having an interview with
• 9:51
  somebody recently and we were talking about the Airbnb changes
• 9:55
  and I said, well, maybe you have to go a bit old school, you
• 9:58
  know, or I say old school, but having a QR code on the fridge
• 10:03
  where people can book direct or, or even giving people a call,
• 10:07
  you know, giving your guests a call and say, Oh, I hope you've
• 10:09
  had a great stay. Daddy, daddy Da, by the way, if
• 10:11
  you want to come again, I'll send you a message to the, to
• 10:14
  the direct booking site, something like that.
• 10:16
  And and that again, is, it's not just kind of going old school,
• 10:19
  but it's hospitality, right? And that's, you know, having
• 10:22
  that guest interaction is, is so important.
• 10:24
  Yeah, absolutely. That's what the whole business
• 10:27
  is about. And I feel like people would get
• 10:29
  a little bit caught up in all of the software, the tools and the
• 10:34
  systems. But like you said, probably just
• 10:37
  picking up the phone or having someone from your team pick up
• 10:39
  the phone and call and follow up to check in.
• 10:42
  And that's probably going to move the needle the most.
• 10:45
  Especially like you get it fresh while they're like right after
• 10:49
  they stay. And they'll first of all, see
• 10:50
  how much you care. Second of all, they'll they'll
• 10:53
  probably be a lot more inclined to actually book with you
• 10:55
  directly, especially if you like let them know, hey, we have like
• 10:59
  all these other properties. If you like this one, this one
• 11:02
  else this one will be the same level of quality, but might be a
• 11:05
  a little bit different of an experience with maybe amenities
• 11:09
  or location. So talk to us about growing your
• 11:13
  portfolio then how have you scaled things and what are your
• 11:16
  best tips on how to scale the property management business?
• 11:21
  Yeah, I would. I'd probably say one of the best
• 11:24
  things that has helped out with me tremendously is just letting
• 11:28
  people know what you're doing. Like if someone's asking or
• 11:32
  you're going to some of these investor meetups or any host
• 11:36
  events, like the amazing ones that you do, just letting people
• 11:40
  know and, and following through on social media, like letting
• 11:45
  people know like what you're doing day-to-day and actually
• 11:48
  posting the content. That's actually what led to one
• 11:52
  of my first management deals is I met someone at one of those
• 11:55
  events and then they seen what I was doing on social media.
• 11:58
  They're like, wow, looks like you're doing a great job.
• 12:00
  Your properties are beautiful and, you know, they wanted to
• 12:04
  learn more because they had a few units that they were
• 12:07
  launching as STRS. So I would say that's probably
• 12:10
  one of the biggest things. Don't hide what you're doing.
• 12:12
  You know, like share it with people.
• 12:14
  I think that's a really great tip.
• 12:16
  I mean, like locally here where I am, two of the most effective
• 12:20
  ways of getting people to understand what you're doing in
• 12:23
  the community. There's a local community
• 12:25
  Facebook group which is so effective at sharing the fact
• 12:28
  that these properties are there because a lot of people are not
• 12:30
  going to know that there's short term rentals nearby.
• 12:33
  And also like local community business meetups as well, you
• 12:38
  know, attending those, mixing with people who might have, you
• 12:42
  know, workers or guests who are staying in the area that need
• 12:45
  accommodation. It can lead to a lot of bookings
• 12:49
  and just just having that network.
• 12:51
  It's, it's so important. And these are pretty simple
• 12:52
  things that anybody can do. You know, pretty much every
• 12:55
  community these days has got a Facebook group that you can nip
• 12:58
  in and reply to a few comments and maybe even if they'll let
• 13:01
  you promote, promote the fact you've got a short term rental
• 13:03
  as well. Are these things that you found
• 13:05
  effective as well? Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:09
  And I I think if you're doing the Facebook thing, it's like
• 13:12
  maybe I get in there and build a little bit of trust and engage
• 13:15
  before you launch into the your full pitch.
• 13:18
  However, like, even with what you're doing with the events,
• 13:21
  like if you go to these events and you see the dynamic of it,
• 13:24
  how they're ran, like we hosted some events here in Canada and
• 13:30
  we're actually doing another one, one of the following
• 13:32
  weekends. And I think it's one of the best
• 13:34
  things that you could do to really build trust and
• 13:36
  credibility in your community and like get the get the word
• 13:39
  out. And then on top of that, you'll
• 13:40
  also have a bunch of great content that you could, you
• 13:44
  know, reuse for social media. And I think that's one of the
• 13:49
  most powerful things that you could do.
• 13:52
  Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of people out
• 13:53
  there, they have a property and they've thought about short term
• 13:58
  rentals but have maybe never got around to doing it.
• 14:00
  So if you are front of mind, you've definitely got an
• 14:03
  opportunity there. And I was speaking to a property
• 14:05
  manager recently and he said one thing they did last year was his
• 14:09
  property management company, they put on a master class
• 14:11
  event. So if any homeowners wanted to
• 14:14
  come along and learn about short term rentals, they could go to
• 14:16
  this event for free. And I think he said they got
• 14:19
  about 30 or 40 people there, but it turned into 4 or leads for
• 14:23
  his business, which they converted and got those
• 14:25
  properties onto their their platform.
• 14:27
  So he said it was, you know, absolutely worth its weight in
• 14:30
  gold doing those events. That building, building that
• 14:33
  community is, is so important. In terms of 2025, apart from
• 14:39
  Trump and his tariffs and all that kind of trouble, what are
• 14:42
  the other key trends that you're seeing that that house and
• 14:44
  property managers need to be aware of?
• 14:47
  Yeah, I would, I would say probably one of the biggest
• 14:50
  things that I'm seeing and even looking at the platform and the
• 14:54
  changes, you could kind of get a good hint to where the industry
• 14:57
  is going. And I think one of the biggest
• 15:00
  differentiators is going to be the more experiential stays.
• 15:04
  Cause with the hotel, you're, you're pretty much know what
• 15:08
  you're going to get. And that's one of the perks with
• 15:11
  hotels. It's pretty consistent.
• 15:12
  You're going to get a clean room, a bed and you know it's
• 15:16
  going to be a pretty standard accommodation.
• 15:20
  However, with the short term rentals, I think when you are
• 15:23
  able to offer some more unique amenities or some cool design
• 15:27
  features and make it more of an experience.
• 15:30
  Like especially with social media now, I think a lot of
• 15:34
  people are looking on these platforms for inspiration on
• 15:38
  where they're going to book or where they're going to stay.
• 15:40
  And they're not going to be looking at a plain Jane hotel on
• 15:44
  social media. They're going to want to look at
• 15:45
  the cool places to show off to their friends.
• 15:48
  So I think that's going to be one of the biggest, especially
• 15:51
  going to when I was in Europe and visiting, you seen a lot of
• 15:56
  like the crazy tree houses, like we stayed in a airplane and like
• 16:00
  some of those. If you're able to get into some
• 16:02
  of those categories in Airbnb, like the OMG, like maybe you
• 16:08
  won't be able to get into the castle category, but there there
• 16:12
  are certain categories or certain boxes that you could
• 16:15
  check that are going to help substantially with your
• 16:17
  business. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
• 16:20
  And in terms of social media that you've got like a decent
• 16:22
  following on on Instagram and stuff, how do you use social
• 16:26
  media to drive people to your properties?
• 16:29
  Yeah. We're, we're working on that a
• 16:32
  lot right now. I think we've done a great job
• 16:35
  just being consistent. I think one of the biggest
• 16:38
  things with growing your social media, your following, your
• 16:41
  credibility, your trust is just like you just got to realize
• 16:44
  it's not about you like at all. It's all about what's in it for
• 16:48
  what's in it for them, what's in it for your audience.
• 16:51
  And I think you got to be able to have and, and it doesn't have
• 16:56
  to be a very hard pitch for every post or anything, but
• 16:59
  having some form of call to action.
• 17:02
  It's like we were just talking about if people don't know about
• 17:06
  your stuff or how to, you know, book your property, it's going
• 17:10
  to be pretty hard. So just having even a link tree
• 17:12
  in your bio. We have some of the I guides, so
• 17:17
  like a virtual tours of some of our properties, links to the
• 17:21
  direct booking. What fantastic direct booking
• 17:23
  website that Mark helped us with and these things in place.
• 17:28
  So then you can like they, they could easily see like, OK, this
• 17:32
  is the places, these are the highlights.
• 17:34
  This is what's in it for me and this is how we book it.
• 17:38
  And do you get influences to look around your properties and
• 17:41
  that kind of thing? Or is it mainly just staying
• 17:44
  consistent on social media and like you say, having the the
• 17:49
  guest really at the heart of all the content, the audience at the
• 17:52
  heart of the content, rather than, you know, creating stuff
• 17:54
  that maybe you like to see? Yeah.
• 17:57
  Well, I think that's one of the core principles, absolutely.
• 18:00
  However, like what we've actually found is that with the
• 18:04
  properties, how we set up UGCI, don't know if you ever heard
• 18:09
  that acronym or term, but having users come in and generate their
• 18:14
  own content. Like we just had someone stay
• 18:17
  from a city and he has a very good following and he came in
• 18:21
  and he made a fantastic reel pretty much promoting our
• 18:25
  management business and the property just because of how
• 18:29
  amazing it was designed and the experience that he had there.
• 18:32
  So I think if you're able to set up your place in a way that's
• 18:36
  like amazing people are going to help promote your place on their
• 18:40
  own. And it's a pretty good business
• 18:43
  model because it's it's free. However, I like if it with the
• 18:47
  rate influencers like Madison with Mount, like if you get the
• 18:52
  rate people, I think it could make a lot of sense and it would
• 18:55
  be something that we would absolutely look into.
• 18:58
  Yeah, that's, that's a great point there.
• 19:00
  I mean, the, the best advocates really are the ones that you're
• 19:03
  not having to pay anything to if they're doing it organically.
• 19:06
  But I guess that again comes back to making sure that they
• 19:09
  know your Instagram handles, you know, sharing that when they go
• 19:12
  into the property and asking people, look, if you've had a
• 19:15
  great stay, mention us on social media and if you maybe if you do
• 19:19
  something, we'll send you a little money off coupon for next
• 19:22
  time or or something like that. It's all these simple things.
• 19:25
  I think in the end can really, really add up to, you know, a
• 19:28
  lot more direct bookings for your business.
• 19:32
  Finally, then Chad, we've got a few questions to finish.
• 19:36
  So your favorite brand in the short term rental industry and
• 19:41
  why? Yeah, the I, I might have to
• 19:46
  give you a 2 I cuz it's hard to pick just one.
• 19:51
  There's a lot, but I would probably say Mark with Bruce Lee
• 19:56
  kinda. I just love how he has like
• 19:59
  really incorporated his brand and like he has that almost his
• 20:03
  personal brand entwined with that.
• 20:07
  So I think that's another great thing.
• 20:09
  There are are great way to really build trust.
• 20:12
  Like if you're so involved in your business that you know, you
• 20:15
  could have you know your your face and you're like, you're
• 20:19
  actually the main person for a lot of the content you're
• 20:22
  generating. That's that's just an awesome
• 20:26
  business model. And I also love link base and
• 20:29
  Shavin. I know he spoke at your recent
• 20:31
  event and his software and his brand is been amazing and
• 20:36
  tremendously helpful for our business.
• 20:39
  Fantastic shout outs there. Mark Simpson from Beastly and
• 20:41
  Shiven from Link base, two friends of host Planet.
• 20:45
  Next question then, Chad, an individual in the STR space
• 20:48
  you'd like to give a shout out to and why?
• 20:52
  Yeah, I would. I would probably have to say
• 20:56
  Brayden known as Mr. Airbnb. He, we were together for the
• 21:01
  trip with your last event and just the level that he is
• 21:07
  operating in the business sense and same thing like with like
• 21:12
  showing the power of your personal brand.
• 21:13
  Like he has pretty much built his whole business off of his
• 21:18
  social media and being able to leverage himself and his
• 21:21
  personal brand. I think it's very powerful and
• 21:25
  really shows like what you can do if you build it up to that
• 21:29
  level. Because now he's doing, you
• 21:31
  know, huge things like development internationally and
• 21:34
  it's pretty, it's pretty insightful and powerful.
• 21:38
  Like it's super inspiring. Yeah, he's doing a phenomenal
• 21:42
  job. He's got great following on
• 21:43
  social media. Also somebody that we
• 21:45
  interviewed on the podcast recently and yeah, we all met.
• 21:49
  I know we've mentioned it a few times, but we should probably
• 21:51
  clarify that we all met in London at our Your Success
• 21:55
  event, which which went really superbly with a lot of brands
• 21:59
  and guest speakers there who were involved from the space.
• 22:02
  Finally then Chad, your number one lesson learned from your STR
• 22:07
  journey. Yeah, that's a good one.
• 22:10
  There's definitely been a few. I would probably say, you know,
• 22:15
  just every bad deal, every bad partner, bad guess slows you
• 22:20
  down. Like it's a lot once you get to
• 22:24
  a certain level, it's a lot about what you say no to.
• 22:26
  So, you know, your and your business is only as good as the
• 22:31
  the people and that goes for both your employees and your
• 22:35
  clients and your guests. So I would encourage people not
• 22:41
  to, you know, jump at every opportunity, even though it's
• 22:45
  can sometimes be hard as an entrepreneur not to chase those
• 22:47
  shiny objects. But I think like in the long
• 22:51
  run, you'll thank yourself for not having to deal with some of
• 22:54
  the potential headaches and it's going to slow your growth down
• 22:57
  tremendously. I think that is really good
• 23:01
  advice, Chad. It's been a real pleasure to
• 23:04
  chat to you and learn more about your journey.
• 23:06
  Thanks for joining us on the House Planet podcast.
• 23:09
  Thank you very much, James. Appreciate it.
• 23:11
  Great to chat to Chad Harker there about tariffs, direct
• 23:13
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• 23:17
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