Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Short-Term Rental Reality: Todd Parker on The Smokies Market

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Short-Term Rental Reality: Todd Parker on The Smokies Market · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

0:00
Welcome to the House Planet Playbook, your go to guide for
0:03
mastering short term rentals. In this special series, we're
0:06
sitting down with 30 of the world's top property managers to
0:10
uncover what really drives success in the vacation rental
0:13
industry. You'll hear their stories, learn
0:15
the key lessons they've picked up along the way, and discover
0:18
the game changing tech they use to deliver 5 star guest
0:22
experiences. If you're serious about growing
0:25
your STR business, you're in the right place.
0:28
We've also developed an e-book featuring the stories of every
0:31
manager in this series, and you can download it for free.
0:34
Head to Houseplanner dot Club to find out more.
0:37
In today's episode, we're chatting to Todd Parker from
0:40
Overlook Cabin Rentals. Stand by for a deep dive into
0:44
the Smokies, the importance of hiring the right cleaner, and
0:48
how to stand out in a crowded market.
0:55
This special series is brought to you by House Planet and
0:58
Hospitable, the smart AI powered property management software
1:02
trusted by hosts worldwide. With Hospitable, you can
1:06
automate guest messaging, sync calendars across platforms and
1:10
manage your rentals with ease, all from one powerful, easy to
1:14
use platform. If you're keen to run your short
1:16
term rental on autopilot, try Hospitable today.
1:20
Visit hospitable.com/house Planet to see how the platform
1:24
can save you time. Reduce stress and maximize your
1:27
earnings. Todd, thank you for being part
1:29
of the House Planet Playbook. Let's start with you.
1:32
What's the name of your company? Where are you located and how
1:35
many rentals do you manage? Name of our company's overlooked
1:39
cabin rentals. We're based in the Smoky
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Mountains and in Blue Ridge, GA, and we're up to 11 properties
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that we manage right now. Fantastic, so tell us about your
1:49
journey then. How did you get involved in the
1:51
short term rentals world? Started pre COVID.
1:56
We basically needed money for daycare.
2:00
Daycare was very expensive and we had a little bit of
2:03
inheritance money leftover. And so we had a few long term
2:07
rentals, but we thought, hey, maybe we could like buy a cabin
2:11
up in the mountains and make a little bit of extra money on it.
2:15
We looked into property managers up there.
2:18
They're charging, you know, 20 to 40%.
2:20
I'm like barely break even doing this.
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I don't know. Then just doing research, we
2:26
said, hey, maybe we could self manage this thing from a
2:28
distance and hey, we'll give it a shot.
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If it works, it works. And we literally closed on our
2:34
first cabin the day the NFL, the NBA season shut down from COVID.
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So I just thought, great, we just bought a bed and breakfast,
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a little cabin that nobody can travel to.
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So aren't we the smartest people in the world?
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But COVID ended up being kind of a little bit of a blessing in
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our industry up there because people want to travel to cabins.
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They wanted to go on vacations, but not being near anybody.
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So they were kind of a perfect getaway for people that were
3:02
going stir crazy. And that kind of started us down
3:04
our journey of buying another property, buy another property,
3:08
building another one, and then we just kind of built our whole
3:11
brand from there. Tell us about your journey then.
3:14
How much have you learned and what are the key lessons learned
3:18
since you started hosting? Some of the big things I would
3:22
say is to always make sure you set your guest expectations
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properly. When you are out there
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advertising your rental or your, your, your property, you need to
3:34
make sure that the guest knows what they're buying basically
3:39
when they approach it. And so you're properly
3:42
advertising, you're describing the amenities properly.
3:44
You're explaining what they're going to get when they purchase
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it. So that way when they arrive,
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they have those set expectations because if they come there and
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like, wait, this doesn't look like what I saw.
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This doesn't look like the photos.
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You're just setting yourself up for problems from the beginning.
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So it doesn't mean you don't have great photos.
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Just don't make yourself embellished and don't and don't
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promise things you can't deliver.
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It's mostly that. Tell us about your area then
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where you're operating, what are the main challenges and
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opportunities where you are? I would say the main challenges
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right now we're dealing with, obviously there is a drag on the
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economy. I would say in the travelling
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economy, bookings are down overall from past years, but
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opportunity wise, there is definitely a place for unique
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and special rentals. So if you are just one of,
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because there's like over 14,000 cabins up in the Smokies, a lot
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of them are the same traditional looking, some bears around
4:46
there, some cabin decor, grandma's cabin, you know, yeah,
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OK. But if you want to really set
4:52
yourself apart and you build something special or create
4:55
something special, you're going to automatically be in the top
4:58
echelon of rentals up there. And so that's really going to
5:02
help you. That's what I really tell people
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now to do is don't just buy one to have one.
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You need to kind of build it from the ground up and design it
5:10
from the ground up, which is kind of hard for people just
5:12
getting into the space because they don't know a lot of those
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things. But that's what I recommend to
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people I talked to who want to get into it now or want to
5:22
advance and is that you need to really curate a unique and
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special place that's going to be one of the top places out there.
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Like we just built a Scandinavian style tree house up
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in the Smoky Mountains. There's nothing like it up
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there. And it's, it's shown with how
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well it's booking even in this kind of down market that we're
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kind of seeing right now. And maybe for your next one,
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then for the next cabin that you build, what are the essential
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things that you'd like to include?
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If you if somebody came to you and said, I want to build 1
5:53
tomorrow, what are the essential things that they should have
5:55
that should really stand out to guests and make sure that you're
5:58
getting very high occupancy and high rates?
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So basically I would say you need to really focus on your
6:05
amenities and what you're providing.
6:07
Obviously, everybody's going to have a hot tub up there.
6:10
It's kind of a standard thing, but how are you designing that
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hot tub? Are you putting in a place where
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that hot tub has great views? Are you putting in a unique
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spot? There's a lot of cabins up there
6:20
with indoor pools. OK, Just because you have an
6:23
indoor pool now doesn't make you special.
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How does that pool apply in your property from a design
6:28
perspective? Does it have a view?
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Does it have like a door or something that opens?
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That's what makes it unique and special.
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And so that's why I really tell people's like you need to really
6:37
incorporate design into your function of your amenities
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because not only is it going to look great in photography, it's
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going to be, you know, advertising wise like that, but
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it makes you different than somebody else and that's what
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you need. You need to make yourself
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different so that way you can provide these really critical
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amenities that people are going to be looking for out there.
6:59
You've mentioned kind of setting people's expectations.
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What are your of the top tips for delivering an outstanding
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guest experience? So I always recommend to people
7:09
that you need to have cleaning focused above all else.
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I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter, you know, you
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could have something broken or something wrong, go on.
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But if you don't have a clean property when a guest walks in,
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you're just that you just failed.
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I mean, straight up, you just failed.
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So it's critical that you have the right people in place that
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are maintaining the property, keeping it clean and going above
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and beyond. Making sure the light bulbs are
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replaced, making sure this is restocked, making sure that is
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clean. It's just something you cannot
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skip on and just something you cannot cut corners on, pure and
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simple. And I would always tell people
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to that to deliver a great guest experience, you need to plan for
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the worst. So you need to make sure that
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you are ready because something's going to go wrong.
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And you need to make sure that hey, I have a HVAC guy ready on
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call. If something never goes wrong.
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I have my general maintenance guy on call.
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If something never goes wrong, I have this person just goes
8:09
wrong. You need to make sure that you
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are ready. So when something does happen,
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you can quickly action it towards the guest saying, hey,
8:16
I'm sorry this happened. Here's what I'm doing to fix
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this. And that's what most guests want
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to see. They understand things go wrong.
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Most people are very understanding out there and
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they're like, hey, you know, we get it, something happens.
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But you need to be showing them that you are working and
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actioning towards the solution. And to do that you need to be
8:34
prepared. You can't be searching for air
8:37
conditioning repair people at 11:00 PM at night.
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You need to be already knowing who you going to call when
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something goes wrong like that. In terms of getting the cleaning
8:47
right, is that a case of finding great people or is it a case of
8:52
training people so that they understand the experience that
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they're delivering? How How have you gone about
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making sure that the cleaning is 100% spot on?
9:02
You go through a lot of people. That's the unfortunate thing is
9:06
you're going to, you're going to fire people and it's OK if, if I
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tell people all the time, if you're thinking of changing your
9:12
cleaners because they're not keeping up to the standards,
9:15
then you're already need to do it.
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It's basically finding people that know what they're doing.
9:21
They have great references so that they they work for other
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people. You talked with other owners,
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they recommend them and then holding those people to account.
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So making sure that you have your own inspector, like we have
9:32
an inspector come by randomly once every two months and they
9:35
will generate a report for me. And that way I can see
9:39
basically, hey, what's getting missed?
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What's not getting missed? We visit our properties every so
9:43
often to double check them, but it's always making sure that our
9:46
properties are, I don't want to say spotless, but pretty darn
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close because it's, it's, you'd be surprised what people will
9:54
find in a place. And you need to have it set to
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those standards. And it's difficult.
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It's difficult. You will go through people who
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don't view your property in the same light you do.
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And it's really, once you find those people, like the cleaners
10:07
we've had in the Smokies, we've had them for four years now, but
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before that we went through three others because I just
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like, you know, you're not, I can't have this.
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I can't have the standard. This is not the way I'm going to
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do business. And basically you just got to
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find the right people and it may take a while, unfortunately.
10:25
Yeah, very true. And based on my experience as
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well, very true as well. You are going to go through a
10:30
few cleaners. So in terms of the Smokies, then
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you see there's like 14,000 cabins out there.
10:38
You've talked about it a little bit already, but kind of what
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makes your rentals stand out? So stuff.
10:45
I would say we kind of lucked into this and now I've learned
10:48
what makes them special. But when we first purchased our
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properties, we didn't understand what made them as special
10:54
because we were just didn't know we were doing too much back
10:56
then. But now that we know something I
10:58
say that really makes our places special is the location.
11:01
Not just saying, oh, I have a place in the Smokies.
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It's like, no, your place. When you pull up like the Airbnb
11:06
map, where does it focus into where when you put in the
11:09
location, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, all those places, where
11:14
does the map center? And that's why I tell people to
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really focus in on, don't go looking outside the lines.
11:20
Oh, there's a great deal over here.
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Yeah, it's a great deal over here for a reason.
11:24
Really focus in where the location is because that's going
11:28
to help you a lot. And I also, we bought our first
11:31
place, it had zero step entry. And we didn't think that was a
11:35
big deal until we realized a lot of places out there have a lot
11:38
of steps to get in there and not easy parking situations.
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So we end up having a lot of guests who maybe have some
11:44
handicap accessible needs who book our place because they're
11:48
like, I love it. Zero step entry.
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Grandma can come with us and she can get in with her Walker cane
11:54
and it's a great deal. Things that we didn't realize in
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the beginning were actually very things.
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So now when we build places and buy places, we really think
12:01
about that ahead of time. How is the drive up to the
12:04
place? Is it a crazy mountain road or
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is it very easy and accessible? So you need to really think
12:09
about those things because a lot of people you have people come
12:11
from Florida or Ohio or it's flat and they don't understand
12:14
the mountains have elevation. So even though they don't
12:19
understand that, they don't care.
12:20
They're driving for hours to your place.
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They're tired, they're exhausted.
12:24
They just want to get in and check in.
12:25
The last thing they want in the dark with no lights really out
12:29
there is to to go up a huge incline of a place.
12:32
They're trying to find the address and their internet's not
12:35
working on their phone. So you really want to think
12:38
about how is somebody going to get to the place easy?
12:41
And it's something that we didn't even think about when we
12:42
bought our first property. But now we're always in that
12:44
mindset when we find places and look for places like how easy is
12:48
somebody going to be able to get to this place?
12:50
And it really matters. Yeah, it really does.
12:52
Accessibility and parking. I think you hit two very simple
12:56
things which are really, really important.
12:59
When you started out, were you like a lot of hosts, myself
13:02
included, you're on Airbnb to start with and then you realize
13:06
there's a lot more to the industry and you start thinking
13:08
about direct bookings and things like that.
13:10
Was that you and and how have you kind of developed trying to
13:14
attract more direct bookings? Yeah.
13:17
So when we first started, we were just on Airbnb, VRBO, and
13:21
that's kind of how we did things for a couple of years.
13:23
And then we moved to other things like booking.com and some
13:27
other websites, some with more success than others, but it
13:31
really wasn't until we started to see that, hey, there is a
13:34
market for direct bookings. And the problem was when we
13:38
tried to start with it, it was just a hassle.
13:40
It was absolute hassle to to not only build a website, try to
13:44
have people do things on there and book it and, but, but then
13:47
to collect payments and process taxes and all the stuff like
13:51
that that you kind of take for granted with Airbnb.
13:53
And you're like, Oh my God, is this really worth it?
13:57
The time and extra effort. And we, we stuck with it.
14:01
You know, our first year of trying to do direct bookings, we
14:04
maybe had like 3. I mean, it wasn't much going on.
14:09
Most of them are people we knew. But as we worked on it and
14:12
developed it and we worked with our property management system,
14:16
hospitable, they started rolling out their direct booking
14:18
platform and we started being an early incorporator of that.
14:22
It really helps start taking things off the minute we have
14:25
people be able to, you know, go on a place, be able to price it
14:28
out, book it. It was just a game changer for
14:32
us. And now we are up to about 2025%
14:35
direct bookings and we are growing constantly with it.
14:38
And it's something we're very happy about, especially as we've
14:41
seen kind of the market dip down.
14:44
Being able to really leverage our direct bookings has been a
14:48
great thing, and we've been doing a lot of that with social
14:50
media. Yeah, I was just going to say,
14:52
what are your top tips for generating those direct
14:55
bookings? So I tell people all the time,
14:58
just because you have a direct booking website doesn't mean
15:00
squat. You've basically built a little
15:03
shop on a back end corner there. Who's going to know you're
15:06
there? Who's going to go by and check
15:08
out your stuff? Probably nobody, OK.
15:11
And so I tell people all the time you need to be directing
15:14
people to there. And so that means you need to be
15:16
on social media. It's just has to be a
15:19
requirement now between not only doing, you know, Facebook,
15:22
Instagram, blah, blah, blah, but we've been doing stuff on TikTok
15:25
too. And we've been kind of doing
15:27
that stuff like, hey, you know, let me talk about cabins.
15:31
Not many people own a cabin. Not people own a vacation rental
15:34
or an Airbnb. So let me talk about it.
15:37
What am I doing today? What the problem I had today, I
15:39
had a bad guess today, what went right?
15:41
What are we doing? We're building a new property.
15:42
Let's tour it. Let's go through this and just
15:45
building that connection with our audience.
15:46
So when people think, hey, I want to book a place, I have
15:51
that connection, that parasocial relationship with this guy and
15:54
this company. And therefore they're my first
15:56
ones to go to. And we're starting to get that a
15:58
lot more traction on that. People like, Oh yeah, I saw you
16:00
here, I saw that or I've seen your post or something like
16:03
that. And so that's been really great
16:04
for us. And then we've also been working
16:06
with content creators, so trying to find the right people who are
16:11
in those travel social circles of, you know, social media and
16:16
having them come out to our properties and not only share
16:18
their experiences advertising, but then capturing B roll
16:22
footage for us and content for us that we can also use in our
16:25
social media posts. Fantastic.
16:28
So what do you love most about hosting?
16:33
The money, no, I mean it is, it is financially rewarding.
16:38
I will say that I do enjoy that, but what I really do enjoy is to
16:44
know that we are building something that people are
16:47
spending their hard earned money on and they are enjoying a
16:50
vacation with their family. When somebody lets us know that
16:53
like, hey, we had an amazing time and we want to come back
16:56
next year because this is like the first captain we stayed at
16:59
that you know, everything's gone right?
17:01
And and you know, we love the place.
17:03
It was so clean and you had everything.
17:05
We love this place and just those kinds of comments to us
17:08
really make the thing. And knowing that somebody says,
17:11
hey, I want this to be, you know, I want to come back every
17:13
year with my family to your place because I loved it so
17:15
much. That really tells me like, hey,
17:17
we're doing something right. And you know, it really feels
17:20
rewarding. Fantastic.
17:23
OK. Then Todd, we've got a few more
17:24
quick fire questions now. You have mentioned them already,
17:27
but which PMS do you use? We're on hospitable.
17:31
And how hospitable helps you to grow the business.
17:35
Well, they started off really as just a channel manager, very
17:39
basic messaging, which is what we needed.
17:42
But they've been growing to a full property management system
17:45
recently and has been coming out with a lot of good features and
17:48
they're just very easy to use. It's one of those things that
17:51
I'm like, I'm comfortable that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow,
17:54
my wife could log in and probably figure it out.
17:57
So it's, it's been really great for us to be able to do those
18:00
kinds of things. And I just think that it's, it's
18:03
just a game changer in the long run because a lot of our systems
18:09
are going to be based around hospitable and the more they
18:13
keep innovating, the more that's going to make our business do
18:15
better. And I think I've seen that with
18:16
the direct bookings that they've been doing.
18:19
Fantastic. Which dynamic pricing tool do
18:23
you use? We use Price Labs.
18:26
Which piece of tech couldn't you live without?
18:30
Tech, we have minute sensors at all of our properties, which are
18:37
basically sound, noise, temperature, occupancy sensors.
18:42
And they provide a comfort and Peace of Mind that I really
18:47
appreciate to know that, hey, if there's ever an alarm that goes
18:49
off, it's going to Alert me. If there's ever a fire, it's
18:51
going to Alert me. If somebody's smoking the
18:55
property, it's going to Alert me now with their new one.
18:57
So it really lets me feel comfortable letting people into
19:00
those spaces now than I did before.
19:03
Great show. So for a minute there ideally
19:06
pets, yes or no. This is, yeah, controversial
19:11
topic. We do have some pet friendly
19:13
properties. Obviously, your market may
19:15
dictate whether you become pet friendly or not because there's
19:18
some places where, hey, everybody else is pet friendly.
19:19
So if you're not, you're really limiting yourself.
19:22
But it is an opportunity at a property to be pet friendly, not
19:27
only because other properties are not and also a way to earn
19:30
additional money, but generally children are worse than pets.
19:36
Little kids are going to probably cause more damage to
19:39
your property than any pet will. At the properties we've been pet
19:43
friendly at for a while, we really haven't seen much in the
19:47
way of damage. Knock on wood, you know that
19:50
that that doesn't happen. So in general, I'm pro pet, but
19:55
it is something that your cleaners have to be ready to
19:57
handle and deal with because you will get some breed that sheds
20:01
like crazy. And so your cleaners going to
20:03
have to be doing a lot more work.
20:04
You got to pay them more money. So it is going to be something
20:07
you're going to have to deal with and then you are going to
20:09
limit yourself because there's some people who will look for
20:11
pet unfriendly properties because they have allergies and
20:14
things like that. So you need to be make sure not
20:16
only are you opening yourself to pet friendly properties, but you
20:19
may be limiting yourself on some other guests too.
20:21
Very true. I think we know the answer to
20:23
this, but hot tubs yes or no? Hot tubs are mandatory in our
20:28
markets. So pretty much you have to have
20:31
a hot tub. I mean, it could.
20:33
It's just a deal breaker for a lot of people.
20:36
Self check in or a personal welcome?
20:39
Self check in all the way, especially the younger people
20:43
don't want to talk to anybody, don't want to see anybody, don't
20:45
want to go. They just we give them the
20:47
codes, go check in. Simple, easy done.
20:51
And they don't want a phone call either.
20:54
Pretty much. Telephone call or AI response?
21:01
I'm so we're just getting into AI and I'm still nervous on it
21:06
because I have, I'm such a control freak and to give my
21:11
messaging to somebody else and hope that it's going to be doing
21:13
the things correctly is something we're still looking
21:16
into and making sure that we train them right.
21:19
Hospitable has been working on some AI things in the property
21:22
management system. So we are looking into that long
21:25
term as a solution, especially for like after hours messaging,
21:28
just because I'm one guy. So I need somebody to, you know,
21:32
answer those things. When somebody messages me at
21:34
2:00 AM, I'd like to have somebody there doing that, but I
21:38
want to make sure they're answering it rightly.
21:39
I don't want to talk, you know, and say something to a guest
21:42
that I wouldn't normally say. So that is something that, you
21:46
know, we definitely want to make sure that we're doing.
21:49
So bit of both for now then with the the telephone call and AI
21:52
response. Yes.
21:55
And what's your most memorable hosting moment?
22:00
Let's see here, I'll give you 2. I'll give you one good one, one
22:03
bad one. So we'll still start off with a
22:05
good one. We had a storm roll through one
22:09
of our properties and knocked over a tree that kind of block
22:13
part of the driveway. The guest had to leave.
22:16
They were kind of local, like only a couple hours away, but
22:19
the power had been out for so long.
22:20
Like they were like, hey, we got young kids, we just had to go
22:22
someplace where it's cool or whatever.
22:25
And so they left, but they came back.
22:27
They had like a week long booking once the power came back
22:29
on. But when they came back, they
22:30
brought chainsaws from home to cut up the tree that was
22:34
blocking the road partially. And they just kind of told me
22:37
like, oh, yeah, this tree was blocking the road.
22:39
We cut it up and just set it off to the side.
22:41
I hope that's OK. And I was like, oh, thank you.
22:45
It was something I've never seen.
22:46
I usually have somebody complain about that, and I had to get
22:48
somebody out there. But, you know, they're like, no,
22:50
we took care of it. And I'm like, all right, good on
22:52
you. Were they hunting for firewood
22:54
or something or? No, just they're like, oh, we
22:57
saw it down and we left and when we came back we brought our
22:59
chainsaws from home and just took care of it for you.
23:01
And I was like, all right, cool. Sounds like a bit of a hobby or
23:05
something I'm. Sure.
23:06
It was some guy with like the with the change like like now's
23:09
my time to shine. This is my moment.
23:13
As for a bad experience, I would say we had a guess because we
23:17
have these gas fireplaces which have like these fake ceramic
23:20
logs in them. I had a guess like take apart
23:23
those log sets and take it outside of the fire pit and try
23:26
to light it on fire. Tried to use the the fake
23:29
ceramic logs as actual locks. Ouch.
23:33
I mean, they might be quite flammable.
23:37
Well, they're they're they're they're stone.
23:39
So they're just so they're the ceramic stone logs that you have
23:43
in the fireplace, in the gas fireplace.
23:46
And they took it outside and tried to light on fire in the
23:49
fire pitch. And I was like, yeah, thanks for
23:52
destroying that. I mean, you, I tell people all
23:56
the time, like you have to think that the guest that's booking
24:01
your plays, and this may be me, but I tell them you have to
24:03
assume that they're just not smart people.
24:06
You just have to you have to cater to the lowest common
24:09
denominator sometimes because you have to protect guests from
24:13
themselves. Keep it.
24:15
Keep. It as simple as possible, yeah.
24:18
Yeah, yeah. It is something I've learned
24:19
over time because I sometimes have to go and like, oh, this,
24:22
anybody could figure this thing out.
24:23
And I'm like, no, no, you got to pretend like you don't know
24:25
this. You have to walk into and say,
24:27
get somebody who doesn't know what you're doing.
24:28
Can they walk in and figure this out?
24:30
99 times out of 100. And if you can't, then you need
24:34
to probably rethink how you're how you're doing it or what the
24:36
amenity is or what it is. Because if you have an amenity
24:40
or something out there that's causing a lot of problems,
24:42
that's phone calls to you, that's calls to a handyman to
24:45
help walk the guests through it or something like that and show
24:48
them. And that's time and money.
24:50
And so I tell people all the time if you if you need to have
24:52
something that's simple and easy and you need to calculate that
24:55
when you bring an amenity into a property.
24:58
Yeah, 100%. I had a couple of guests this
25:00
past week actually, and they called saying the hob on the
25:04
cooker's not working. And also we don't know the Wi-Fi
25:07
code, the usual we don't know the Wi-Fi code.
25:09
So I went round, my rental's around the corner.
25:13
The switch for the cooker wasn't on.
25:16
So that was, and it was right next to the cooker.
25:19
And then for the Wi-Fi code, it's the, the code is there
25:23
literally on the router. But unfortunately it was their
25:28
company which had booked the rental for them and they hadn't
25:31
shared any of the check in instructions or anything like
25:34
that. So they didn't get the link,
25:36
they didn't get the guide book. So yeah, so it was a quick,
25:39
there we go and read that. So it was a very quick fix.
25:43
But yeah, we've all, we've all been there.
25:47
OK then Todd, so we've got a shout out now.
25:48
Is there an individual in the STR space who's helped you that
25:52
you'd like to give a shout out to?
25:53
I would say our original realtor that helped us buy our first
25:58
cabin, Jennifer Mix. She does stuff in the Smokies
26:02
and in Florida, but she was really instrumental in helping
26:05
us navigate how do we do this, how does this work?
26:08
What happens, do we do this? You know all the questions you
26:11
have when you first start off and not knowing squat about
26:14
renting a place out. She really helped guide us and
26:17
helped us with our first couple purchases and so I really
26:19
appreciate that her for that. Fantastic.
26:22
Final question then. Ultimate goal for your business.
26:26
The ultimate goal is hopefully we can get to a size.
26:31
I want to stay small, but I want to get to a size where we can do
26:34
this, you know, full time. I still have my main job going
26:37
on, but I'd love to do this full time and get to a place where we
26:40
can really sit back and enjoy the day-to-day stuff of our
26:45
properties. And so that makes like making
26:47
sure that we have everything automated and down and we can
26:50
focus on growing the business long term.
26:54
I don't want to be a big property manager.
26:55
I like being small. It lets me kind of really cater
26:59
and create really special places, which I think is more
27:02
important than just number of doors.
27:05
But to do that you need to have really good systems in place.
27:08
And so our our goal is to make sure that we always are building
27:11
them on those systems. Fantastic.
27:14
Sounds like a great goal, Todd. Thanks for sharing your story,
27:16
and thanks for being part of the House Planet Playbook.
27:20
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
27:21
All right, that's it for today's episode.
27:23
My thanks to Todd for sharing his journey and for being part
27:26
of the House Planet playbook. Remember, this series is brought
27:29
to you in partnership with Hospitable, the all in
27:44
So you can focus on delivering a top notch guest experience or
27:48
just get some of your time back. And here's the good news.
27:51
Houseplanet Playbook listeners get an exclusive 14 day free
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trial plus 25% off for the first three months.
27:59
Heads to hospitable.com/houseplanet to
28:02
claim your offer and start running your rentals on
28:06
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vacation rental hosts, heads to Houseplanet dot Club where you
28:12
can sign up for our newsletter, listen to our podcasts and
28:15
download our suite of ebooks. Until next time I'll be hosting.