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- [00:00]
A
Okay. Welcome to the Boostly podcast. On this podcast we give you the tools, the tactics, the training, most importantly, the confidence that you can go and get more direct bookings. We do a mini series on this podcast where we interview amazing people from all over the globe and we've got an amazing guest on this episode. This is where we shine the Boostly spotlight. We shine it on Garrett Brown. He leads the short term rental content for Bigger Pockets. And most people here will have heard of Bigger Pockets, but if you haven't, wherever you've been, it's one of the world's biggest real estate platforms. Garrett has also got experience firsthand with str. He's an investor, he's a co founder of a glamping business and he's just someone who you need to know about and listen to for the lessons and the tips that we're going to pick up from him today on this episode. So welcome along. Garrett. Thank you for joining us today on the Boostly podcast.
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B
Thanks for having me. I'm, I'm happy to teach everybody my mistakes so they can learn from them. So it's, it's going to be exciting. 100.
- [00:56]
A
So how did you get into short term rentals? Give us the, the history.
- [01:00]
B
Yep. So I, I went to school for hotel management actually in college at the Conrad Hilton who started, you know, all the Hilton or Hilton hotels. He went to school in the University of Houston. He started his own college there. I went down the route and, and graduated from that college thinking I was going to do something more in the restaurant field possibly. But as time went on, I, I got further into real estate. I became a real estate agent and I was, you know, kind of enamored by the investing side of it and I found bigger pockets. I started researching everything, learning everything about the investing side and was like, all right, I, I need to, like, I was, I was an agent and I was working with all these investors and they were making so much money on deals and I was like, okay, I have to learn this because everybody's making all the deals and I'm the one just like help them, facilitate them. I started flipping houses, buy and hold multi families, everything under the sun. And then about 2018 I heard about, you know, short term rentals and Airbnb and I was like, okay, that, that sounds interesting. Like I, you know, maybe my hotel background will help me with, you know, the hospitality side of it. I had a, and I had an investor I was working with. He was about to sell three small condos in downtown Houston. This was 2019 when you could throw, you know, throw an air mattress in a place and probably make some money on Airbnb. And he was thinking about selling them and I was like, hey, like they were, they were pretty cheap, but they're in a decent area of town. I was like, what if I bought them from you all together as like, you know, a package deal and we work it out. And he was like, you know, I'm fine with that. Let's do it. We set it up. I got a pretty good deal. I put them on Airbnb, started making pretty good money. I was making an extra, you know, each unit was giving me like 1,000 or $2,000 in my pocket each month. And I live near them, so it was super easy to manage them. But then all the big money started coming into Houston and Covid hit and all this happened and that's when all the athletes where short term rentals will shine is like having really cool, unique stays. And so that's when I dove into the glamping side of stuff. This is 2021. I started my company, Cameron Ranch Glamping, which we now have over 25 glamping units between two different, three different sites in Texas. You know, we've grossed, grossed over a million dollars each year for the past couple years with that company. And I also manage another co host, whatever glorified word you want to use, another 10 units in the short term rental world. All within the same different areas too. And I've been with bigger pockets now for a couple of years. I've been making content forever in the short term rental space and it just happened to work out about the same time. They needed to really develop the vertical over there for all the short term rental content. And like the short term rental investing side, they've been kind of known more as, you know, long term investing, more multi family and things. So But a lot of their. They were getting 20 of their audience wanted more short term rental education and somehow they found me and decided to give me a microphone and a YouTube channel and a newsletter and so here I am. Teach everybody every day.
- [04:18]
A
We're glad they did 100 we wouldn't be having this. And is there any, any stage where you just, you know, I should have gone into restaurants instead, instead of all.
- [04:25]
B
This like instead there's a couple times. But honestly the restaurant business is such a bad business. Like I worked in restaurants. I was a waiter, bartender, my aunt has a cooking school. I worked with her. It was. I saw the writing on the wall there too. And I was like, I definitely don't want, want to do that for paper thin margins. So I made the right choice.
- [04:44]
A
Now 100% better to be in control of the asset, isn't it? But I do think that everybody, I think that should be like, you know, sort of like, you know, people who go to like combat experience, stuff like this should be like everyone should have to go and work in hospital, even in a restaurant or in a home and have to do this because it'd be so much nice know the people who haven't worked in it.
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B
Yeah, I say that all the time. You should, everybody should be a waiter or hospitality for at least six months out of their life. It's, it's just kind of a life changing perspective for you.
- [05:14]
A
And it can be fun as well. There, there is, is fun to it. So you mentioned bigger pockets and you know, obviously the huge community across there with all of the hosts and you must see some questions which come in quite often. What would you say is the most often asked question in the bigger pockets community regarding STR or the one that you get? Probably more than any other, I'd say.
- [05:38]
B
There'S two and a couple years ago I wouldn't every question, the questions change every year because the, the thing about the short term rental market is while it's maturing, it also is, is ever evolving too. I'd say the two biggest que. Well, three, I'll correct that. The first two I was going to say is like what market should I invest in? Which everybody always wants to think that there's some secret hidden market out there that nobody knows about. You know, and another question right now, because not as many people are buying, you know, two years ago was a buying spree. Now I think everybody's trying to figure out how to make more money with the property they already have. Whether that's design, redesign, amenities, marketing, how can they not go buy another property but increase their profits. And then the third one that I will add just because it's so new and you know, just talking with everybody I do in the space is everybody is, is trying to buy a short term rental right now because of the, the 100 bonus depreciation coming back in the United States in particular, which is a, you know, they call it the short term rental tax loophole, which is not even a loophole.
- [06:40]
A
It's.
- [06:40]
B
It's in the, the tax code for the IRS in the United States where if you buy, you know, this is a very, I'm not a cpa, but this is a very Quick synopsis of it. If you buy a property this year, put it in, put it into, you know, use and, and, and on sites before the end of the year and get a few bookings in and you actively manage it. If you have higher occ, if you have a higher active income with your day job, you can offset some of those losses by doing a cost segregation study on the property.
- [07:11]
A
Nice.
- [07:12]
B
So if people understand that, that, that probably made a little sense to them, but it probably sounded like broken English to some other ones. So basically what I'm gonna say is talk to your CPA and research the short term rental, you know, loophole bonus depreciation. If you're curious about that, don't just go out and buy a property just to try to take advantage of some tax savings because you might end up, you know, in a worse position than you're in. So those are the three biggest topics I've seen in the past few months.
- [07:37]
A
And I know with those questions, you know, you've touched on the answer to the third one, but with those questions, I mean, they're pretty big questions. I mean, I guess the answer to the first one is like, hey, there isn't special market. Go and do your own research. There's, you know, there's tools out there, isn't there? But with that second question, as you say, a lot of people are now in a position to be consolidating, trying to make the most out of what they already have. Instead, is there any quick wins that you can. What, what would be your most go to answer for those questions? 1.
- [08:06]
B
I mean, since we are on the boostly podcast, I'll 100 degree as somebody that does 75 direct bookings myself, is to not underestimate the power of a direct booking website. And also don't get discouraged because you make a direct booking website and you have it up for like a month and you didn't. You're not getting any direct bookings. And it's like, oh, like this, this is a fail. It's like, no, it took me two and a half years to get to 75 direct bookings. And that's because I put a massive plan of action to get to there. And as we both know, Airbnb just made another huge shift. I actually was talking to Mark this morning in an email. He's gonna come chat with me soon about that. But now they are about to charge host 15. They're taking away their guest service fee, charging host 15.5%. And you know, there's a couple of different variables there, but it's just another point of reason to why building your own infrastructure on the marketing side is so important. And people think, people think because, you know, not everybody has these one of a kind properties and these super unique stays that they're like, oh, I'll never get any traction on my direct booking website. But they overlook the power of, you know, search engine optimization. Having a really good website that targets the keywords. If, if you have a, a couple vacation rentals and they're just regular places up, you know, up the decor, up the amenities get, you know, look at your competition in your area. But the main thing is like build that direct booking site that caters to that, that target traveler. So for example, I have quite a few, you know, they're lakefront properties, but they're not, they're, they're not super unique or anything wild. They're, they're just good, solid vacation rentals. But it's called Lake Livingston in an area I'm in. I make sure that my website is targeting this, the search engine optimization. For any person that is coming to search for Lake Livingston vacation rentals or Lake Livingston cabins, I am going to pop up near Airbnb and all these things like that because people underestimate the power that you actually can put into your own website and are, and are afraid to spend money on a good website and are afraid to spend money on making sure the SEO strategy behind it is right. You know, they'll just build a website and then it has, you know, it's just a terrible user experience. There's no SEO behind it. And it's just they're wondering why they're never getting any traction. But spend a little money up front on those tools and really focus on how you can cater to that person. Like get in the mind of the person that would be coming to search for a place like you. They're probably getting on Google, they're probably typing XYZ Area Vacation Rental or XYZ Cabin and you need to be one of the first people that pop up there because the competition is a lot less, I feel like on the organic SEO side than it, than it is in the paid advertising side and even on the, you know, social media side. So there's opportunities to bother.
- [10:58]
A
We, we had a guest on recently and, and he's an SEO expert and he said that the trouble is most people are trying to compete at the hardest level by going, you know, like places in New York, you know, places in New York. You probably, the big guys are probably going to outbid you on a lot of that stuff. But actually, and there's an example that he used where a host who's got higher than Airbnb and came up before airbnb for booking.com and that's because they said specifically, I want to target people who are working in the Amazon warehouse down the road. It's what brings people to my rental and, and they managed to anybody who said, where do I stay? You know, working in for Amazon or whatever, you know, like, and it always comes up top and the variations of all that and it goes to show, like as you say, is if you can niche down, if you can make sure that you're either the most pet friendly or the most boutique design or the most colorful or the most family friendly or whatever it is, it's really niching down, isn't it? And it's great to see.
- [12:00]
B
Yeah, people, people think like, and that's a great point because it's like, yeah, you're not going to compete at, you know, vacation rentals in Texas. You know, like, figure out who, what they're exactly searching for to come to your area. But then the other thing, people think like blogs are dead and all this stuff too. I even was looking at our analytics before we got on for one of my websites and I have my, my assistants write blogs for me and a couple sometimes they're always like, oh, we just wrote a blog on this. Why we have to do it. I wouldn't look in the analytics. And I had made them write a romantic couples getaway. The best romantic couples getaways in Texas. And I looked at it this morning and it was our third highest performing link on Google Analytics and all that because people are searching romantic getaway. Romantic couples getaways in Texas. And we niche down and started to really, you know, find out like what our demographic is. And those are like very simple, very cheap ways to increase your SEO. Everything doesn't have to be a paid ad. That was a, you know, no pay that we ended up getting 500 clicks in a couple of days from this one random blog article that we're not blog article writers, or at least my assistant isn't. So it's like you don't have like to have some special skill set to do it.
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A
You don't. But the benefit of that blog is Evergreen as well, because what you're going to get is come February or the end part of January when people are thinking about Valentine's Day, they that blog is going to move to number one because people are going to be looking at it. And every year that blog will re, you know, it'll resurface just because it's evergreen. And this is the thing that, you know, the one thing that struck me straight away is to, to get to that 75% direct bookings. It didn't just, you didn't just write one blog and like, oh, Suddenly you're at 75. It's that blog, it's the next blog, it's the SEO, it's the branding, it's the experience, it's the reviews. You know, it's all these little nudges. And I was talking to my at marketing VA before this, just saying look, if it's little nudge but often that's actually good enough because you're gonna, them nudges are going to compound, you know, over, over time. What is one thing especially new hosts do you think underestimate in the STR world?
- [14:00]
B
I mean I think people underestimate. I think we had so many people selling this to make $20,000 a month and it's completely passive on Airbnb. And you know, like I think, I think everybody kind of underestimated how much I don't want to say how much work it takes because the thing I have found, I think they underestimate how much work it takes up front because the thing that's really cool with short term rentals right now, especially compared to five, six, seven years ago, is that there's so many software features out there now that you can pretty much automate 80 to 90% of your business there. There's times where you, you need the human touch. You know, give a guest a digital hug as I like to call it, just in case they need something. But for the most part it, it can be kind of automated but it takes a lot of work up front to get that automation understand it. You know, try out, you know, you'll have a few issues that fall through the crack and then it's your job to solve those issues within the automation to. It's, it's just basically like greasing the wheel. Like anytime there's anything that like kind of hiccups, you go in and fix it and you eventually are like such a fine tuned machine that even me right now like I work a full time job, I manage 30 units. Like I, I have a team of four people under me. But for the most part a lot of it is still automated even with like AI tools and all this too. So I think the biggest thing, I think people underestimate is one like the cost of actually getting into this. You can, you, you can be creative and get into creative deals for sure they're out there but people underestimate that. You're usually going to need a little money to get started in the short term rental world. I've heard of, heard other people do stuff but that is a big thing and then it's going to take some work up front. It's not going to be a thing where you just snap your fingers and launch the property and you're making a bunch of money. There's some operations and systems that need to be set in place, but really good software tools and a really good product make all everything else way easier for you to begin with.
- [15:49]
A
I think the, you know, that point of your people needing to know there's work involved is so important. But that automation, I mean this summer that I've just had a similar size business and this summer I've just had is probably my easiest summer ever. And I'm managing the most units and I'm thinking, well, what is the difference? Well, it's actually that it's reps, you know, it's reps. We've just got the automated messages, we've tweaked them and changed them so much over the years that we've now got to a stage where there's not that much human interaction. You know, we do call guests from time to time. We do, you know, have conversations or if they ask for genuine recommendations. We're not just a company AI and stuff like that. But when, when you do that and you're just seeing these five star reviews coming in based on the automation and especially the messages that I recommend anybody listening put out is I have a check in email. So hey, it's Liam here, just checking in. This is the, you know, the first morning, is everything all right? You know, and that's as basic as it is and I don't sign off with like kind regards or any, any of the normal company crap that we put on the emails. They genuinely think it's me just checking in with them and of course it's not, but my team has got a response, you know, depending on their answer, you know, as to what to do. We've got the SOP set up but it's just one of those ones where the more automated you are, the better. But I think back to that first time that I set up on the very first unit, building the first automation, thinking well what do I put? How do I do it? How often do you Send a message and it's a nightmare at first, but the only way you can do is to test it and to listen to podcasts like this and experience isn't it so, yeah, it's very cool. You mentioned glamping. What is a key lesson that you took from your glamping business?
- [17:38]
B
It's definitely more work lands. I think the biggest, there's a few things if you're buying an already made, you know, glamping business or anything like that, like you'll have a lot of things set up. It's more work on the landscaping than people will tell you. There's a lot of like upkeep on the outside of the property, which cost a lot. But you know, that's why some of these glamping sites cost so much to stay in. But the other thing is if you're building a glamping site is underestimating how much it costs to put infrastructure in too. So people, people think, you know, I can slap up, slap up a cheap, that's, you know, it kind of go hand in hand is you hear people think like, oh, I'll buy some really cheap land in the middle of nowhere. I'll slap up some of these thousand dollars safari tents and you know, these two thousand dollar super cheap geodomes and we're going to crush it. We're going to charge 500 a night. And they don't understand that like those products are cheap for a reason. There's a, like you're going to be replacing them over and over. Guests are going to hate them. There's a, like roads and electricity and water and sewer and all these cost way more than you think. Whatever you're thinking. Those utilities and infrastructure costs probably go ahead and triple that depending just how the times are now. And so, but, but that's where the, the opportunity is there too though. So I think the one thing that I, I think that I see a lot of glamping people do is they think it's like a really cheap thing to get into and you can make it that way, but you're going to have really cheap rents. You're going to have not as desirable of a, of a, a guest pool I would say. So usually going cheap is going to bite you in the butt later on. I would spend a little money up front and I personally, I would never build another soft sided structure. I built several of them. I only like hard sided structures. They're way easier to maintain. They have a little more asset value. They're easier to climate control. All the things you can think of. So that was one, you know. But when you're starting out, the soft sided structures are kind of enticing because even the really good ones, like my Geodome is from a company called Pacific Domes here in the US it was about $18,000 with shipping and aligner and all these things. But it's a super high quality product and it does really well. Would I, you know, like I love it, would I build another soft sided one even if it was high quality? Probably not, but it was a good entry for me to get into this space and I learned a ton. So you know, the glamping industry, it's one of those things that I would 100. Make sure that you understand how much work it's going to take to keep the landscaping look really nice and then don't go cheap on your structure just because you saw somebody else, you know, do it before. It's going to be a nightmare for you in the end of it.
- [20:15]
A
You know, whenever I think of glamping, especially here in the uk I think the only way to do it and you know, this might be one of those kind of myths or I don't know anything about glamping at all. So I think if I was going to do it, you've kind of got to go down that really high end niche where it has got hot tubs or saunas. Is this the sort of thing that you do or is it more of a family kind of vacation or is it varied across your, your glamping business? Excuse me.
- [20:45]
B
Right now we, we hammer down on the romantic couples getaways. Super high end luxury hot tubs, excuse me, saunas, everything at the site, it's performed really well. Like it, we have crushed it for a lot of different reasons. But the thing about glamping is you can go two routes pretty much. You can go the super high end, less units on you know, pieces of land route or you can go the, you know, put 20 or 30 geodomes or whatever you want to do on like a smaller piece of property and they share a lot of communal things and you go more family and have a little lower rates. My advice for that, because both of them are art, could work. That's the thing. I know people that crush it with that model with you know, more family style, a little cheaper. And I know obviously people that crush it with the luxury in. I think the luxury model is, is becoming a little oversaturated actually. I think everybody is trying to go to that route because it's you Know, does well on social media and it's kind of like the Hot Topic and buzzword and all this stuff. But there's still a ton of opportunity there. But even as we are expanding now, my next build is going to be more of the mid priced glamping experience because the thing I have seen is we get so many traffic. We get so much traffic to our websites, but our conversion rates are not very good. One, we don't have enough units. We need more units that fit a particular model that we're looking for. But the other thing is our like, price. Like we get so many people that are like, man, like how expensive can you be? You know, and at some point too, like, you have to remember, like, people will just, you know, they'll go to, you know, Mexico and go on a cruise or something before they start spending a thousand dollars a night and you know, in, in the middle of nowhere Texas. So you got to be like, you know, reasonable with your rates. But the thing we're missing, we're getting all this traffic, but we're not able to capture a lot of it because the masses really sit in that, you know, 150 to 300 price range. Yeah, more than the, the 400 to 600. You still get a ton there. But the, the biggest advice I have for anybody though is, you know, why I decided the luxury route is I went and stayed at a bunch of glamping sites. I went and stayed at ones that had 20 or 30, you know, dome tents. I went and stayed at ones that were super high end luxury. I went and tried different things to see what I personally liked and what I thought I, you know, could replicate and like what I would want. Because I, I kind of felt like me and my girlfriend, girlfriend at the time, wife, now thought that, that it would be like what would we want to stay in because we were kind of the target demographic. But you may go out there and go, I hate these super high end ones. I like the communal feel and I want the, the feeling of that too. And so that may be the route you go or you know, you could be like me where you, you have a little mix. I would pick one of them. Go, go see which ones you like and then hammer down on that niche at first. And then once you start to get a lot more traction, you can look at like maybe expanding the portfolio to hit, hit a little more of, of the tar, you know, more target and masses that you want to. So both of them can be successful though. That's the thing about it is it's really just, you know, knowing your niche and then like hammering down on that exact niche and not trying to be, trying to be everything for everybody.
- [23:57]
A
I like it, I like it especially you know, here in the uk, especially where I am. There's one place which sticks out as the best kind of. And it's not so much glamping. They've got these amazing kind of. It was a pub, a British pub, you know, as you get. And out the back they basically built these, these wooden kind of rooms and each one's got its own sauna, like steam, steam room and like cold bucket and stuff like that. And it started off as a really simple idea. Now it is by far the number one place to go to. Anybody who says place with like, you know, steam room, hot tub, something a bit special, bit high end, romantic and that's the number one place which, and, and they've done it before anybody else locally and you look at and just go, wow, there's still a lot of demand for that sort of thing. The opportunity is still huge I think. Yeah. So. And this may be the same answer to that question, but I'll ask anyway. But I was gonna. Is there an overlooked kind of guest type in the market segment that people should be considering more? Obviously we've just talked about high end luxury. Is it that or should they be looking at some other direction?
- [25:03]
B
I, I don't want to give away too much of my plans because I don't want everybody to take it from me. But now it's, I mean honestly, like I said, I think, I think the high end luxury market is growing. It's one of the biggest segments, like if you look at all the research, like, like the health and wellness trends are just exploding with amount of people money spend. I personally, like I said, I think that every single person is trying to go that route. So I think having really cool unique stays that are more affordable for the masses probably will suit some people better. But I think the real niche that people are missing and you know, I think it's obvious to a lot of people, but I, you know, I'm not saying anything groundbreaking is the pet friendly market. There's a lot of pet friendly places but I think and, and one of my plans with some of my new places is like a very dog centric, focused place that almost like where you cater to the dog more than the person. Yeah, I think that that is where the gap is in the market and particularly where I'm looking at. So anybody else out there has been kind of Kicking the tire and thinking about it. I think and I know the data will back me up on this. I you know, I'm anecdotally saying this right now, but we all know pet friendly filters on Airbnb are probably the most searched and, and all that. I think that a dog centric or pet centric, whatever you want to say, like focused place that to where it's where you're catering to the do would could possibly like crush it and explode. And like there's a lot of reasons why like I think that. But we all know that people will pay top dollar to take their dogs places and the accommodations don't have to be anything that is just out of this world expensive. You know, that's when you can kind of balance the, the masses pricing but then like you know, get these pet fees and these like at you know, all these add ons you're selling and all this stuff too. So without like going too much of a geeked rabbit hole, I would say that that that is where somebody could really crush it in the market right now. Pretty much anywhere they wanted to.
- [26:57]
A
You've got my mind worrying on that one because people do just spend so much money on their pet and I think there needs to be another setting on, on short term rentals. So instead of just you know, pet friend it should say because some places aren't pet friendly, they're pet tolerable. Do you know what I mean? Like yeah, you can bring your pet. Don't have them in this room, don't have the monster, there's no phone.
- [27:19]
B
Lock them in the car.
- [27:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, all this stuff. So, but, but actually when we talk about being pet friendly, you know the type of place you go where there actual are dog treats or, or a dog, you know, or you know like where there's, there's the walk route is all decided. There's a map wall of every walk the dog will enjoy. You know, all of that sort of stuff is, is super cool.
- [27:38]
B
So I love that answer and pet and pets. The thing like my marketing brain thinks of too is two of the most popular things on social media are really cool vacation rentals and pets and dogs. You combine both of those. Like oh man, you've, you've got virality almost every time you post. So it's, it's kind of like a win win. So yeah, if you anybody paying attention and following me on social media or anything like that, hopefully in the next year I, I have, have moved forward on this dog friendly dogs, dog centric glamping units.
- [28:06]
A
I love it. I'm definitely going to be following you on there. So I've got to ask, because it is the buzzword AI. What is your take on S on AI in STR at the moment?
- [28:17]
B
So I, I mean, I, I love AI. I think it has a tremendous use. I think of it more as a tool, more than, like, replacing people. Like, everybody is like, oh, I'm. I'm using AI to, you know, replace my VAs and all this. And it's like, I, I, you know, just, I, I use host buddy AI, which a lot of people know. Jay's a great guy. You know, I've known him a couple years now, and he did. Him and Sam developed a great product. There's a couple others out there that compete, but sometimes like host buddies and even better hosts than, like, me or my VA's just like, time, that hot time. They answer all these things, but there's a lot of things that, and I mentioned it earlier, like, sometimes guests just need a digital hug, and they can't really get that from an AI. Sometimes, Sometimes they need to hear a human voice or just have that. You can tell it's a human on the other line. AI is so good now that it is hard to tell. But we use AI as a tool, host buddy. Like, I have my VAs go in and they're monitoring all the messages. They're using it together in unison. But the cool thing I think about AI, that I think people a little bit underestimate, which, you know, again, maybe this is just my guest experience marketing brain. You know, once we talked about earlier, like, you know, you build out your systems, you build out your operations. It takes some time. The cool thing is once you get it maximized, now you can sit back and go, okay, I, I have this set up. It's, it's, you know, going to be constantly changing. But how can I optimize this? So, like, we use now, like, how can I increase the guest experience? How can I increase every, like, all the efficiency, everything there too. So, like, one way we've been doing recently is after I kind of stood back and I was like, all right, I want to increase the guest experience even more. Like, we had been doing handwritten notes to people, like, and it was become like, my cleaners would forget. It was just like, it was, you know, and I got at my. It was just one of those things that it was taken. It was operationally was becoming a little harder to keep up. So I, I told him, my VA is what I want to start doing is I, you know, I, I used to make music and I, you know, so I love music and being creative. I told him, I was like, let's find out the guest details that they are coming for. Like, are they celebrating a birthday? All, like, we ask all these in our automated messages. Like, are you celebrating anything? Like, how'd you hear about us? Where are you coming from? All that we get all that information. I have them, my va1 va particular feed it into chat GPT make song lyrics, take those song lyrics, put it into a AI song generator, make a song. And then a couple days before their stay, we send them this link and tell them we made this special song for them. The amount of people that have commented on this song recently thinking one in review saying, like, they made us a song, they were amazing. Like, I didn't think it was gonna have this much impact, but the amount of people that actually think we like hire a singer to go in and like, send them this stuff. Like, people have been like, oh my God, she has such an amazing voice. And like all these things too. But it's just one of those things that's like, what are things that other people aren't doing? And like, what is it going to be? Like a weird, like, people be like, oh, that's kind of corny. Or, oh, that's. And it's like, no, like, it's not. It's like you're adding more memories to this day. Like, these people, like, this is their getaway. Especially like in my places. Like, they are probably spending their hard earned paycheck on like the most expensive, you know, stay they're going to have in the next few months or the whole year, you know, or whatever. And so like, how can we make this as memorable and special as possible? And so like using AI to do things like that. Like, we also, you know, like in conjunction, my VAs use AIs to give them like exact recommendations for itineraries for the weekend. Like, if they tell us, hey, we're going to be here for three days. Like, how, you know, what restaurants should we go to and what, you know, how can we rent a boat? And it's like, put it together. My VA already has a good idea. Put it, you know, put it into chat, GBT or Claude or whatever you want to use and then send them a really nice detailed itinerary. Guess some guests love that, you know, so I. It's a tool. It's not something going to replace everybody. You're not going to be able to be, you And AI against the world. Just no beat, no nobody helping you and all that. Like, it will make your business so much more efficient and operational. And it does, like, help you scale faster without having to keep hiring and hiring, you know, add on. You can add on smarter as opposed to like maybe, you know, hiring a little too quick sometimes.
- [32:31]
A
So 100 and picking up on those threads, there's two things I just want to come back on. And this is where a few years into the business, when you're calibrating, it's a bit like when you're tuning a petrol engine instead of having to build it from scratch, you're. You're basically. They're just tuning little bits and pieces using AI and using, you know, automations, testing different things. It's actually some of the most fun time, isn't it? Tweaking instead of building from scratch. Absolutely. That idea about the song is just genius. That's the first I've heard of. Of this. There is a. Is it Sumo or something? There's a. There's a song generating app called Sumo.
- [33:08]
B
There's a few of them. Yeah, I think I pay like $10 a month. I can't even remember the name. Like my va. It's some random one. Like, I'm sure the songs honestly sound terrible, but apparently they're working for $10.
- [33:19]
A
I've tested these and I actually put about our brand and thought maybe I could have that as the background in one of the promo videos and stuff like that. You know, they're actually. All right. I. I can't wait until there's a device. And, you know, you said about those handwritten notes, because we still do exactly that. We get our cleaner. They can see on Breezeway, you know, the handwritten note or whatever it is, and they just do, you know, hey, the, you know, enjoy your stay. Hope you enjoy celebrating your birthday. Whatever it is, is a little handwritten note. But the trouble is with that, like you say, everyone's human, people forget. You never want to leave the wrong name because it's worse than not leaving a note, you know, I mean, that sort of stuff. But I can't wait until there's an AI kind of version where, you know, you have them photo frames that you. That you have, where people used to just plug it in photos. There must be a way of having one of those where when guests walk in on entry, our API system would just know their name and be like, hey, Garrett, thanks for joining today. That would be mega, wouldn't it?
- [34:13]
B
So I don't. I Haven't used this product yet. But it actually, I was researching it last night. Have you heard of welcome Screen yet? I don't even know the guy. Okay. So this, this is gonna be a great advertisement for this guy. So apparently like because you know when you walk into like hotels and they'll have like welcome, you know, Garrett, Welcome. Yeah. And like the. This guy now has. It's integrated with Logify and all these things that you can put that on your like Roku TV screen. He has like a welcome Screen thing that you can leave a message on it. You can have like your WI Fi QR code, have a specialized song, I think on it. Like all these cool things to it. And you know, I'm kind of diving into it now and so I. I don't know about the product. I personally don't use it. But it. But there are things starting to pop up like that, you know, it's going to be really cool to see the future.
- [34:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That person touched. Where I want to get to though is where it's actually me. An AI version where it is actually. Hey, hey, Garrett. And they'll think that's a personally recorded. We can't be far off that. And hopefully, you know, in the future we'll be. We'll be in. Do you remember we talked about that.
- [35:17]
B
We might need to cut this part out the podcast. That's very cool. That'd be awesome. But who knows where these things. It's going to be like evolutionary how these things develop over the next few years for sure.
- [35:28]
A
It's so exciting, isn't it? Especially with. With AI and that side of things. So I'm going to skip ahead a couple of questions because we've dived into so much value already. But I want to know, is there tech and tools that you rely on? You mentioned host. Host Buddy AI, which we've had Sam on the podcast. I've got drunk with him in London. Yeah. But is there things that you rely on or ones that you'd want to just give a shout out to that you use and you've found works for you and your businesses?
- [36:01]
B
Yep, for sure. My core three, the ones I tell everybody about is I use Logify for my property management system. There's a lot of them out there that are really good. So just try things out and see what works for you. I use price labs for my dynamic pricing, which is huge. Definitely best I. There's that highly recommend them compared to a lot of other options you have out there for a few different reasons. And then Turno is my, you know, cleaning, cleaning operations and things are broken and like, handy things there. Those are like, I call them the Holy Trinity, basically of our setup. But then at the same time, we also, if you're really starting to build this out as like a team and a business like, which I am doing now personally, we have like, my team, we. We have an open phone, like, which is an app that you can have a business line in. You can have your VAS get within it. It's super cool tool. It integrates with Host Buddy now as well. So super, super easy to communicate there. And then we use Discord. A lot of people use Slack to communicate between their teams. I use Discord. I'm a millennial and I'm also like, free. So, you know, why not save a little money here and there when I can. I'm trying to think what are some big other ones? We use a lot, you know, Asana. We use it for our, like, task management. I tried Breezeway, it was cool. A lot of cool features. I love the safety features and things they have within it. I personally like Turno mixed with Asana. So it does my team for a few different reasons, but, but that's kind of the structure we did there. And off the top of my head, those are like the main, main ones. There's, there's a lot of little things I use, but those, if you, if you have that kind of in line, you're going to be pretty much ready to rock and roll all around.
- [37:32]
A
100 and this is where constantly in these forums we asked like, hey, what is the best set, set of tech to have? And you go, well, actually, you've got businesses which will grow with Turner, you've got businesses which will grow with Breezeway, you've got businesses that will grow with every different pms. And, and the trick is just find something which works for you. As long as it kind of does that part of the puzzle. So you can swap out, you know, insert PMS name. Do you know what I mean? You can swap that out. But ultimately, as long as you found one that works for you and you can grow with it, then this is cool. And that's the same. You've kind of got to have like task management, you've got to have, you know, your team, you've got to be able to communicate with your team. And across here, I tried to get open phone, but it's not. It wasn't available in the UK at the time. It may not be, but there's just call which is a UK or European similar version. So there's always something you can swap out and have it, which is cool. So bringing us towards the end of the podcast, what would you say real success looks like in the STR space? What should people be focused on as a host and what should they ignore? What's the noise that they just, you see too many people get caught in.
- [38:41]
B
So I, I think the cool thing about short term rentals and I debate this all day, every day at Bigger Pockets because you know, we have five or six different, you know, heads ahead of real estate investing, data analysts, content creators, all this. We all, we all real estate invest to all different forms. And I think the really cool thing of short term rentals compared to every other type is that it can it, it really fits whatever you want it to fit. If you want just one vacation home that you in an area that your family likes and you want to visit it sometimes but then still have it pay for itself and you get the lifestyle benefits of having a vacation home in an area you've always wanted to while still making you some money and, and all these things there like that is amazing.
- [39:26]
A
It's.
- [39:26]
B
If you want to be a massive, you know, co hosting company or own a hundred rentals and all this stuff too, you can do that. That is amazing. You want to fall in between. You can do that with, you know, and then you get the benefit of enjoying your place. You get the benefits of increasing the revenue when you want to. Like there's no other forms of real estate out there that, well, not besides commercial. There's no other form of residential real estate out there that, where you can really just by doing a few things increase the amount of money you're making every single year. So success is relative is why I'm saying all that to you. Because what success to me isn't may not be success to you. Like I talk to people all day and I, you know a guy that reached out to me on Bigger Pockets forums not long ago was kind of, he's like, hey, I, I'm curious. I'm thinking about buying a vacation rental. Like I don't want to make a bunch of money from it, but I want a place like that my family can visit and I get you know, a little bit of tax benefits because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm actively managing it and we pretty much will pay the note and you know, keep it running that way and, and all this and he achieved that and now he has a, a house that he can go visit with his family for like a month or two. I, I taught him all the systems he needed to set it up to where it's pretty easy to manage by himself. You know, like I'd say you, you know, you can manage short term rentals by yourself with just a really good cleaner and a really good handy person and a, you know, really good systems and save that 20% from a CO host. And this is coming from somebody that manages a lot of properties, you know, and like makes money off of that. And I tell people all the time that short term rentals are almost as easy as to manage as a long term rental. A lot of times sometimes even easier because have you, you know, long term rentals, you can walk in and they could be, you know, somebody could flood the place and never tell you and all this other crazy stuff. So kind of like as a big loop back around. The really cool thing about short term rentals is you success is, is what it is to you in it. So it's, it's however you want to make it. And I just, I think that you should go into it with the, the vision of where you want to be in five to 10 years with it and you'll be able to set yourself up for, for success from the early stages. And again what success looks like to you in five or ten years only you can decide. And that's the beauty in it.
- [41:34]
A
That is a mic drop moment. I like that a lot.
- [41:37]
B
Nice.
- [41:38]
A
Very good G. And it's so true. I mean I was in a mastermind meeting today where all these long term property people were talking about how their property's been trashed and this has happened and this has happened. All long term stuff. Well, we get to see our properties like every clean. We don't have to deal with big refurbs. If we want to do a refurbish, we plan the date, we take it off, it gets better. Then there's a sudden big cash injection afterwards where people come and stay because everything's been updated. And this is the cool thing about this industry and the other thing is and talking about what success means to you and it's one of those things which I always liked is we're all human, right? We're only here for a short period of time but we create memories and usually the things we remember most is vacations, time away with family and exactly what that person who reached out to you on the BiggerPockets forum said. I want to create a hub for where my family go and all that stuff. Well, we're actually getting paid for people to make their best memories. And that's pretty cool, right? You know? Absolutely. That's very cool. So, Garrett, how do we follow you? Go and find out more about Bigger Pockets or you personally or your business. Where's all the links? What should we go and do?
- [42:52]
B
So you can follow me on Instagram, TikTok @Garrett Brown re like real estate and then also anywhere on BiggerPockets. I have a YouTube channel under them called Bigger Stays that, you know, subscribe over there. We do a ton of short term rental content. Mark has been on like three or four times now. But I think our like highest returning guest over there. Yeah. And so like, that's a great news resource for there and anywhere on Bigger Pockets. You know, I'm always in the forums and the short term rental investing section answering questions and putting out a ton of content over there on the blog and everything weekly.
- [43:25]
A
That's cool. And all of this will be in the show notes. So if you listen to this on the podcast and it's safe to do so, you're not driving, you can click the links in the show notes and I'll take you to these places. Was there anything we missed, Garrett? Anything to see us out? Any closing words or anything that you. You didn't get a chance to share?
- [43:41]
B
No, I just h happy to step in and always fun to nerd out a little bit over short term rentals and direct bookings. Those, those are my two things that get me out of bed in the morning. So I'm happy to chat.
- [43:51]
A
This has been so fun and the number one thing I'm going to take away from this, as many people listening to this, I'm sure will will come and follow and I am going to follow you and follow up on the dog plan and the pet friendly stuff.
- [44:02]
B
Please do hold me accountable.
- [44:05]
A
That song. The song is genius. Thank you so much for coming on the Bouchely podcast. We'll see you again in the future.