Mike Bayer
You're listening to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, and this week's episode is brought to you by the kind sponsorship of Minut. Are you worried about noise complaints and unauthorized parties, or smoking in your rentals? Meet Minut, your peace of mind solution. Minut sensors discreetly monitor noise levels, occupancy, and even detect cigarette smoke, all while respecting guest privacy. Easy to install and manage from anywhere, Minut integrates seamlessly with your smart home devices and enhancing the guest experience experience while ensuring your property safety. Say goodbye to sleepless nights and hello to happy neighbors and guests. Protect your investment with Minut. Check the link in the description of this episode to find Minut in our virtual vendor showcase.

Mike Bayer
Without further ado, let's get this episode started. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
Today's guest is part of the new Australian short-term rental contingent that has been hitting the conference stages throughout Europe, the US, and South America in the past year. I heard Rebecca Cribbin speak in Barcelona at the Scale Conference last May, and I was so inspired I wanted to bring her on here to share her message about keeping it together under pressure.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer. And as ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again. Wow, we had quite the week last week. We evacuated the RV because of tornado watches and warnings and headed to an inland hotel, along with many, many other people actually in the park. Some waited it out, but we thought about it and this 38-feet of plywood construction is probably not the most robust accommodation to be in, in case of a tornado. And sadly, there was a tornado touchdown in an RV park in Mariana, Florida, and it pretty much wiped it out. Five people were taken to hospital, and most of the rigs in that RV part were destroyed.

Heather Bayer
There was a lot of damage along the Florida Panhandle last week with that weather, and we've just been through something very similar today, but without the tornado watches, but the rain is phenomenal, and we had high winds too. It was a little bit of shake, rattle, and roll for a while, but we did stay put. I was glad when the weather settled down enough so that I could record this interview with Rebecca Cribbin.

Heather Bayer
Ten years or so ago, we hadn't heard much about the short-term rental world in Australia. We didn't know much about what was going on down there. In fact, my first meeting with an Australian property owner wasn't until 2016, when Diane Denton, who is the owner of Seahorse Diamond Beach, came to our Vacation Rental Success Summit (VRSS) in Toronto. Diane's got such a great niche because she welcomes horses to her vacation rental as well as dogs, and we spent a lot of time talking. I mention Diane's website in a lot of my courses, particularly the ones I'm doing about niche marketing, because she really has hers nailed. I'll put a link to Diane's website in the Show Notes so you can check it out. But Diane and her husband came to VRSS again in 2018 when we held it in San Antonio, and it was really great to see her for a second time. Then the following year, I met Deborah Labi.

Heather Bayer
If you've ever been to a Scale Conference or one of Antonio Bortolotti's Vacation Rental World Summit, you will not have missed Deborah. She's so enthusiastic and inspiring. She's a serial entrepreneur - look her up on Google. I will put some of Deborah's sites - she has many - on the Show Notes, so you can check her out. Those words enthusiastic and inspiring are actually the words I'd use for all the Australians that are now on the conference circuit. There's Bart Sobies, Julie George, and of course, Rebecca Cribbin. I've never been to Australia, but if these folks are representative of the short-term rental business leaders over there, the managers and owners are so blessed with the wealth of knowledge, the motivational spirit, and joy they bring to the business. They're just so much fun.

Heather Bayer
I first met Rebecca in Barcelona last May at the Book Direct Show, and she gave such a great presentation on a topic we don't talk about often enough. And it's about how we manage our own well-being and mental health while doing this business. I loved that presentation. I've been bugging her ever since to come onto the show and talk about it with my audience, because she's got a message that should be shared widely. So without further ado, let's go on over to my conversation with Rebecca Cribbin of Holiday Rental Experts.

Heather Bayer
I'm super happy to have with me today, Rebecca Cribbin. I finally pinned Rebecca down because I last spoke about meeting Rebecca in May, and it was about 50 podcasts ago, I think. I said, I'm going to get Rebecca on the show very, very soon. And here we are, nearly nine months later. So better late than never, Rebecca. We've met up since then, and you've always been so busy, but it's absolutely super to finally pin you down.

Rebecca Cribbin
Excellent. So good to be here with you, Heather. Yes, we have met in all sorts of places all over the world, and how fabulous, and how lucky are we to be able to have the opportunity to do those things?

Heather Bayer
Well, yes. I mean, you've done a lot of traveling. You've done a huge amount of traveling this last year. So I finally tracked you down near Sydney. So this is great.

Rebecca Cribbin
Yes, I'm back in Australia at home for a little while. In fact, I'm off again on Tuesday. So we've just managed to fit in before I head back your way for a month for a family holiday. So I've got my children and my grand baby, and we're all headed your direction.

Heather Bayer
Oh, yes, of course. You are a Gigi now.

Rebecca Cribbin
Gigi, that's right. You got it. You remembered, darling, thank you. Yes, I'm way too young, I think, or I'm pretending that I'm way too young, to be a grandma, so I thought Gigi was more appropriate.

Heather Bayer
I think Gigi is lovely.

Rebecca Cribbin
I laugh.

Heather Bayer
And you are way too young.

Rebecca Cribbin
And I'll poke him in the eye if he calls me grandma. Smack his bum if he calls me grandma. I'm not grandma, I'm your Gigi.

Heather Bayer
I think Gigi is the best. I wish I'd chosen Gigi.

Rebecca Cribbin
That's right.

Heather Bayer
So tell us a bit.... for those of you who haven't come across you, anybody who's been to any conference in Europe, North America, South America will have come across you, but for those unfortunates who have not, can you give us a little bit of a background on what you do and how you've got to where you are now?

Rebecca Cribbin
Certainly. Well, the last 12 years, well, coming up 13 years now, it's been a roller coaster road for me to say the least. I've worked my butt off, laughed a lot, cried a lot, and learnt a lot of tough lessons along the way, like you, we've talked about this before. In 2010, my kids were nine and eleven, and I was a real estate agent with my own business selling houses and permanently renting property as well in Australia, near Sydney. The opportunity arose to manage one lonely short-term rental, and the rest is history. Over those 12, 13 years now, my team have looked after 1,300 properties. We have taken 65,000 bookings with a value of over 100 million dollars. And most importantly to me, we've helped 500,000 families or people take fabulous holidays and create memories. And I think that's what we as short-term rental managers can be very proud of, is that we spend a lot of our time helping people create beautiful memories. During that time, of course, I've been a woman, which is not always the easiest. I've been a mother. I've worked with my husband in a startup that brought all its own challenges, obviously. I laughed because I love the song by Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive because I think that was my mantra in the early days.

Rebecca Cribbin
In those 12 years, I've also lost my mother, which was a difficult time for me. Moved four times, renovated five houses, got divorced, got heartbroken, re-partnered with my beautiful David, that I think he's actually more famous on the short-term retail industry set than I am, God love him, and started four businesses, raised my children and other people's children. Heather, I was always the house where the children came to hang out. And I've always had young kids working for me as well. I pride myself on building a business that's very family-orientated, and those children become part of my family, the young ones and the old ones as well, of course. I think I'm proud to say that I've been very successful and I've built a fabulous business, but I've learnt a lot of tough lessons along the way. And I think we're going to share some of those today.

Heather Bayer
Exactly. Because I sat in on your session at the Direct Book Summit in Barcelona, and it was 12 lessons that you've learned in twelve years. And every single one of them resonated with me. And I thought, oh, my goodness, I've been there. I've done this, and I thought..., and this is why I said at the time, got to get you on and talk about these 12 lessons, because I think they're going to be super helpful, even if it's just for people to know that they're not alone. I think that's one of the biggest things.

Rebecca Cribbin
We're all fighting the same battle, aren't we? We're all fighting the same battles. We all have the same problems. Probably for you and a few of the many of the other women that have been in that room, and men, of course, but not necessarily as much because a bit of what I talk about is about being a woman and a mother and now a grandmother. I think running through and reflecting on our history is a bit like a cuddle for all of us.

Heather Bayer
That's a great way of putting it. Well, let's kick off with the first one then.

Rebecca Cribbin
Okay, so the first one is that revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. So I think that's a lesson I learned the hard way. There's been sometimes over the years that I've really focused on building revenue, but then I realized that I was sacrificing my profit by spending too much money on actually building the revenue up and bringing in sales and adding resource and employing people that... I mean, I'd agree with anybody. You've got to employ smart people who are smarter than yourself. But I think sometimes you've really got to... well, all the time, if I reflect back, I have to remember that profit is the sanity, and that's where you make money. That's how you build a business that becomes an asset. You've got to keep your eye on the prize. You've got to increase your revenue, but you've also got to decrease your expenses and be laser-focused on the numbers. Most important. A little example that I share is that if 100 businesses start, two years later, there's 20 left. Four years later, there's four left. And of those people, only 1% earn more than a million dollars profit per year.

Rebecca Cribbin
So you've got a one in a hundred chance, if you start your business, of earning more than a million dollars profit a year. And I think for those people that are on the circuit with us and doing the same job as us, they should pat themselves on the back and realize just how well they're doing if they've been in business for more than four years. And remember to focus on the bottom line. It's number one.

Heather Bayer
It's interesting. I was talking to Chris Maughan from I-PRAC yesterday, and he was just talking about financial hygiene and the fact that when COVID hit, he had three years of running costs to keep him going, and it was just about taking care of that money. So that was a good one. Okay, let's go for the next one.

Rebecca Cribbin
Excellent. Okay, the next one is make the time now. In the beginning, when you, when you're hungry and you're enthusiastic, you think that you actually have to work all the time. I've worked 13, 14, 15 hours a day, seven days a week sometimes. But you've got to set the habits up; you decide your future.  But really, it's the habits that you create that decides your future, and you're in control of it. Our business is a monster, but if we're not disciplined, we don't make the time now to have time with our family, our partners, or husbands, or wives. Go work in the canteen - in Australia, I don't know what you call it over in the US or in Europe, but ours is the little canteen where the children come and buy their lunches. I remember my kids used to absolutely love it when mom was there, because they'd bring all their kids to the canteen and they'd all buy red frogs. I'd give them the red frogs, of course. They didn't have to pay for them, and they thought it was the best, and my kids thought it was the best.

Rebecca Cribbin
Book in your time. Put it in your default diary so that you make sure, because you can never get the time back, Heather. Make the time now. And also, for your wellness, meditation, exercise, food, a well you means a well business. Nothing is more important than making the time now to fit in all the things that set you up for success as far as relationships and health are concerned, in my opinion. Make the time now is number two.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, and I think that's great. I was 20 years as a property manager, and when I left, when I sold the business, I had my first summer in 20 years that I enjoyed it. And I could have done this before, but I didn't.

Rebecca Cribbin
So you got to make... So that's why that advice is so important. We've both been there. I've had moments. And now, as you know, we've discussed that I am making the time to head overseas. And we've just been through a summer here in Australia because it's the other side of the world, and we're in the middle of our peak season. So we're having all that fun at the moment.

Rebecca Cribbin
Moving on to number three. This is one, I think, that is really tough. Develop a thick skin. It's a tough gig running these businesses. There'd be days, I took everything to heart, and every guest and every owner. I discounted, I gave refunds, I donated to every football, soccer, netball, tennis club. Every charity that came along, I felt sorry for. I let people cancel their bookings because their dog died. I needed to develop a thick skin and not take anything personally. There were many times I got teary. I think now I'm probably after not quite as long as you, beautiful Heather, but nearly, I'm getting there. I'm probably a bit of a bitch, really. That's actually not true. I'm probably seen as a bit of a bitch because I've had to develop a thick skin in order to survive in this industry. You can imagine, you would have 500,000 guests, and I think probably 10% of them, tried it on in some way, shape, or form. As far as guests and owners are concerned, develop a thick skin and don't take anything personally or anything to heart.

Rebecca Cribbin
Another thing in developing a thick skin is confronting the breach. When something goes wrong, you've got to confront it, not bury it. And my thin skin with my team would mean that I wanted to say something about where they breached something. And I know breach is a hard word, but I think that saying is fabulous, 'confront the breach'. So I would not do anything about it. And then there'd be 10 breaches, and I wanted to kill someone. If I'd have confronted the first breach and had a bit of a thicker skin in that regard, then it would never have got to the 10th breach. I probably wouldn't have been so pent up and so cranky about the situation. I had to realize in building my thick skin that it's not personal, and I should have taught my team more to understand that the reason that I am giving feedback is not personal. It's so that we can do better in our business. So all of that, and complain while you're still happy. Yeah? Confronting the breaches. Give feedback while you're still happy.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I love that one.

Rebecca Cribbin
Because otherwise it all goes pear-shaped, as they say. So number three is develop a thick skin with your guests, your owners, and your team. And yes, always confront the breach while you're still happy. It's not personal. It doesn't mean that you're unemotional either. It's more professional to have a thick skin. That's it.

Heather Bayer
Okay, next.

Rebecca Cribbin
Beautiful. So this one could be a little bit controversial post-COVID. If possible, work away from home, kids, and life partners while you're building your business. I guess things have changed, as I said, since COVID. A lot of people are working from home. But for me, it was about I need to distinguish between where I work and where I play. And that meant a desk in an office for me. It's hard in a startup because it's an extra expense. But for me, and I went into business with my husband, and if I really reflect on it, we were married for 20 something years. But in the end, it probably was one of the trigger factors that led to our relationship's demise. Fortunately, we're still great friends. And this week, we're all with my grown-up children and grandchildren, we're all going to Mexico for 10 days holiday. So it ended okay in the end. But working with your life partner, working with your kids in  the room is tough. I did it. I had my kids, I picked them up from school and I sat them in front of the television. But I needed, with reflection, I think if I'd have separated those things a little bit more, I could have made the time now for it, but I could have also focused 100% on getting shit done. There was a lot of times when I was operating at 50.....

Heather Bayer
Even if it's a she-shed in the garden?

Rebecca Cribbin
It doesn't matter. As long as it's a space, exactly.

Heather Bayer
Space away.

Rebecca Cribbin
Space away from the washing machine, and the big one, Heather, is stay away from the fridge.

Heather Bayer
I was just going to say stay away from the fridge.

Rebecca Cribbin
If you're not at home, you can't go to the fridge or the washing machine. The two places that I dislike the most. I laugh with my children because they do remember there were many times when they found their mother on the laundry floor crying, and they would wonder why mom was crying. And most of the time it was because the straw that broke the camel's back was the soccer socks. I spent my entire life turning dirty, stinking soccer socks inside the right way so that they could be washed. And that was the culmination of all the strength. And I wanted to insert the soccer socks, not into the washing machine, somewhere else, and threatened to put them under my children's pillows if they didn't turn them in the right way. So stay away. So number four is, if possible, work away from home and your kids and your life partners.

Heather Bayer
That's a great one.

Rebecca Cribbin
It's not always easy, but... So moving on to number five. Take risks, but only the calculated ones.

Heather Bayer
That's great.

Rebecca Cribbin
I guess I'm a risk taker in work, but I'm a real scaredy cat, personally. So it's actually been a little conundrum for me. I'm not the... I'm certainly no daredevil when it comes to my personal life or my adventure life or anything along those lines. But I've been a huge risk taker in business. There's been many times that I have hired somebody before I knew my business could afford them. There's been many times that I've taken risks when I thought that I could do it, but I was definitely not sure. But I always calculated it as well. To scale a business is a risk for anybody, I guess. What I did was.... I call the calculation..., sometimes that's a dream, but success leaves clues. I've always looked at other people's success stories and read and got to chase mentors and paid for a great coach. I've done some planning every week. I've always done that blue-sky thinking, even if it's on my own when I'm lying awake in the middle of the night.

Rebecca Cribbin
There's so much on my mind. I try to move my mind away from day-to-day actions by having a piece of paper beside the bed and a pen. But I thought, well, I might as well do some blue-sky thinking. And that taking a risk also comes down to if you really want to be successful, in my opinion, it's really hard to do that if you're really conservative.

Heather Bayer
That is a great point. That's a lovely quote.

Rebecca Cribbin
Yes. So I mean, it's whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And I think my key line to that, if you're going to jump, you've got to jump and you've got to jump hard. And I did that. And I'm proud of myself for that, to be able to in business, not be a scaredy cat like I am in my personal life. And plan it, make sure you think it through well; then jump hard, because if you haven't done all that planning, it's a gamble. And there's a very big difference between a risk and a gamble. And I don't gamble anything. I take risks, but I think about them very hard before I go, and then I go full-hard into it. So number five is take risks, but only the calculated ones.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, and I think that is so important. You said the difference between a risk and a gamble. If you're doing a calculated risk, then you've covered off what is likely to happen. So love that.

Rebecca Cribbin
That's exactly right. So that's beautiful. So the next one we all resonate with, which is recruit the best and outsource the rest. As Richard Branson said to me, once upon a time, always recruit people smarter than yourself. In the group that I was lucky enough to be in with him in South Africa in 2018. There's lots of things in regards to recruitment, isn't there, Heather? It's not my forte by any means of the imagination. I've made some crackingly good decisions, and I've made more crackingly bad ones when it comes to hiring and firing. I think I've hired the right people and I've hired the wrong people, and I've fired the right people, and I've fired the wrong people as well. In Australia, it's a very, very difficult process, much more difficult than in America. In In Australia, once they've been with you six months, it's almost impossible to move them on. It comes back to job descriptions, KPIs, goals, 360 degree feedback, hire slow/fire fast. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. I think that's an interesting one.

Rebecca Cribbin
Whatever's missing and you can't get, now we're so lucky because we're able to outsource them. Those resources that you need. And by outsourcing, I don't necessarily mean offshore team members. I mean to a coach or someone like yourself in your training programs. That's outsourcing. Finding out how to do things. Learn from the other people that know the industry and have done what we haven't done. And there's also..., I have 14 Filipinos and a couple of Malaysians that work for me. And I guess the lesson that I've learnt in those is that if they're cheaper up front, they require more training. If they're more expensive up front, you can probably get away with less training. So recruit the best and people that don't have the skills that you have, recruit the right people to do the right thing at the right time and what you can't find outsource to someone that can help you be better.

Heather Bayer
And there's some great resources now. I mean, years ago, there was really nobody to help you. Now you've got Better Talent, Steve Trover's organization. You've got Extenteam. If you need people and you need them knowledgeable about the business, and at any level, you can approach these companies, and they're going to help you find them. It's not really necessary to go out to Upwork and do it all yourself.

Rebecca Cribbin
It's not anymore. My other business, Holiday Rental Experts just this week has launched a outsourcing service for offshore team members that come already trained in STR, so we can talk about that at some other stage. That was number six.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to break into the interview for just a few moments to hear about our sponsor Minut. We'll be right back with more great conversation shortly.

Heather Bayer
Welcome back, Nathan. I'm really enjoying hearing more about Minut week by week. The question this week is one that I know many owners and operators would have, because guests can be really wary of monitoring devices. Should we tell our guests that we have Minut installed? How do we reassure them that their privacy is going to be protected?

Nathan Smith
That's a great question. I think if the question were, are you required to tell your guests, it can be a bit of a grey area, right? Because it's important to note that Minut does not record any audio. We are monitoring the sound levels, but we're not recording any audio. And any processing takes place on the device itself with edge computing so that we're only sent the accessible level. So no recording, no sound, no audio is transmitted even to our servers to process or anything of that nature. So technically speaking, most regulations will say you have to disclose a recording device, and this is not a recording device. Now, all that being said, We certainly recommend that you should tell your guests that you have something like a Minut in the property. Reason being, number one, you'll actually deter those types of guests who are planning to come and do something like throw a party or something that you would not prefer to happen inside your property. So it may actually result in you having a better quality of guests. Secondarily, if you've set up any automated communication and they begin to get too loud and they receive an automated text or call, it can be a bit jarring to receive without having known ahead of time that that detail would be monitored within the rental.

Nathan Smith
We provide some information, including blurbs on our website, that you can actually add to the listing, letting people know that things such as noise, cigarette smoke, temperature, humidity, are monitored within the property. They know it's for their safety and for their comfort, but also that you do know what the sound level is. And beyond this, obviously, if you prefer to disclose even more information, we give a welcome letter that you can add to your packet of information that you give to your guests. So we would say, yes, disclose it to your guests.

Heather Bayer
That's great. Thank you very much.

Rebecca Cribbin
So we're moving on to number seven, which we were talking about anyway, which is be a coach and delegate. So obviously, to scale, you need a team. Can't do it on your own, which is what we were just talking about. But you need to be able to be a coach to your team and to delegate as much as you can. And I've been really ordinary at both of those things. I'm harsh I told myself, but the more team members I got, the less time they got of me, which meant that perhaps I set them up for failure, because I didn't share with them what I wanted from them and what their position being successful looked like for me and my business. If I... probably reflecting, and all these things are reflecting, I'm far from perfect. In fact, I have mucked up. Because we're on a podcast, I'll use the M-word rather than the F-word. I've mucked up more things in all of these points over the last 13 years than I care to actually think about, which is why I feel so passionate about sharing them with people that haven't been doing it for as long as you and I have ever. I've mucked them up, but I wish that I'd have coached my team. I've been more of a coach to every single person that came on board, because if I'd have given them a month for three upfront, I probably would have set them up for success better over the years.

Heather Bayer
That is so perfectly put.

Rebecca Cribbin
Yeah. And the people that I did, I was their coach and their mentor in the early days are still with me. I've got someone who's been working for me for 14 years, longer than I've been doing short term rentals. I've got another for 11. I've got one coming up for 10. I've got three at seven. But those people knew Rebecca. They knew what Rebecca wanted. They knew the vision. They lived the vision. They lived the experience that we wanted to create for both our owners and our guests. And then we got big and Rebecca was stuck not in the admin or the doing things that actually weren't that important. So I didn't provide them with that coaching, and I wish that I had. There are a few other things under that. Don't be addicted to being right. There's been some times when I probably thought I was probably right, but it didn't matter. I didn't need to be right. I just needed to be soft and kind and caring. Give feedback comes back to what we were talking about before. Create an honest, open environment where people aren't frightened. There's a few times I've got really cranky because people haven't done what I'd asked them to do, and then they don't tell you, so they hide things, and you never find out that they didn't call that owner back until you've received the termination notice.

Rebecca Cribbin
Anyway, be open and honest. Open, honest environment is very difficult to create in an industry like ours, where there's a million things going on at any one time. And we all make mistakes and we all miss things. And I say to my team all the time, if you haven't got a memory like mine, write it down and don't leave your desk until you've got through everything that you've written today. Because, of course, we know that you can get a blocked toilet in one of the 350 properties that we look after. And if you don't write down that toilet is blocked, you take 10 more calls and you've forgotten about the blocked toilet, and then you get home and you wake up at 11:00 at night after you've been asleep for a couple of hours and you go, Oh shit, I forgot the toilet. But at that time, someone else is having to deal with it on the after hours and the like. So, yeah, get to communicate as well with your team, but number seven is be a coach and delegate.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I mean, I really resonate with a delegate, because I held all these things in that I knew how to do. And it was just... It just was going to take too long to teach somebody else to do it. So I may as well do it myself. And I think this is what so many people do. I'm the best at it. It's going to take me ages to teach somebody, so I'll just carry on doing it. And then...

Rebecca Cribbin
That's exactly right. That's why I have, exactly why Delegate is there. And I'm sure that when we talked, we laughed about that, because being an entrepreneur, I think maybe the more successful entrepreneurs than us, Heather, I think are the ones that learn to let go and give it to someone else to do. Because to super scale, we got a few mates in the industry. I would call you and I scalers. We've scaled our businesses. We've got very successful businesses. You've been successful in the transition to exit, but we're not super scalers, and I think these super scalers are able to [delegate] adequately... or, no, they're not control freaks like you and I.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I figured that if I could have delegated out a lot more, we would probably have been a bigger company when we sold. Anyway, let's move on.

Rebecca Cribbin
Yes, I'm with you. Moving on. Number eight. Don't be afraid to be expensive. Somebody has to be the most expensive. So discounting is a never-ending spiral. It comes back to number one, profit is sanity. If you have a fabulous business and your team believe in you and you deliver on your promises, there's no reason why you cannot be the most expensive. And in turn, if you are the most expensive and you are delivering all those things, you'll also be the most profitable. In the areas that we operate, we probably are the most expensive, but we're also are confidently the best. But obviously, any new owner doesn't know that because they're not working with us. And any owner that comes on board that's newly a short-term rental owner doesn't know that either because they've never experienced the competition. But I know, because I've seen people come and I've seen them go and I've seen them come back to us. And I say to my team, our competition know what we charge. If they were confident that they could deliver the service and the bookings that we do, then they'd charge the same as us.

Heather Bayer
Yes, perfect.

Rebecca Cribbin
They're just not confident enough.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca Cribbin
Number eight is don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to be expensive or the most expensive because someone has to be.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. Someone has to be. But you just said it, you build that reputation, and that enables you to charge more because people will seek you out because of the reputation.

Rebecca Cribbin
That's exactly right.

Rebecca Cribbin
Number nine, know your competitors, but don't be afraid of them. I haven't spent much time at all over the years looking at what the competitors do, because I think all the time that you spend looking at that, you're not spending looking at your own business, and you can't change what they do. Copying, I see that as flattery. We write new web description formats on our properties and our competitors copy. We do something, a discount, third night for free or something, and our competitors copy. I think that if you obsess about the competitors, then you're losing focus on what you need to focus on, which is your own business. Don't compete on price. Don't get into a price war. In fact, walk away, I think. But stand tall and deliver on what you promise. Spend the time working on that so that you can actually do the step before, which is be the most expensive, and just ensure that you look better and that you are better, I think. So know your competitors, but don't be afraid of them.

Heather Bayer
I like that. We had a number of... In the early days, I spent a lot of time looking at the competitors because nobody was sharing anything. Everybody I was saying, well, this is our secret. We're not going to let it out. But in the last five or six years I was in my business, it began to open up. We created an alliance of property managers in the area. We got together every month and we talked about what we did and then realized that we were all doing exactly the same thing in general terms. We were all servicing the same clientele. We were going after the same owners. Maybe we were doing it in different ways. But I think just getting together as an alliance and a network and talking to them frequently, they became friends. At that point, they ceased to be competitors. Yes, it's always healthy to take a look at what others are doing. But yes, you're absolutely right. You will get copied. You will have competitors doing what you do. And for me, that was always something to be proud of because...

Rebecca Cribbin
Yeah, flattery.

Heather Bayer
It's flattery, yeah. I felt really flattered. You're doing what we did. So clearly we're getting it right.

Rebecca Cribbin
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. So number 10, everything changes. One of the questions that I ask when I interview people is, do you like change? And I think there's a lot of people in the world who don't like change. And if that's you, don't work in short-term rentals because everything changes. Change is just a complete and utter constant. You can't really even plan for it. So you just have to plan for it, if you know what I mean. You can't plan for the change, so you just have to plan for the change. But there's going to be change. You can train your muscle I suppose, and teach your team that we can take advantage of change, and we need to be able to pivot quickly in our industry. And that is love change, embrace change, and be ready to give it at any time. And also there's no time to be perfect in our industry, I don't believe, we've got to just get something happening. It's time to start it, get on with it and do the best that you can, because everything changes. That's number 10.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I mean, I see it. You mentioned the word pivot. I mean, the biggest pivot was COVID. COVID delivered the pivotal moments. We had to change entire business models because what we had been doing was not working anymore. And what we did in 2019 was not working in 2021. So yes, but when you've got a team that is prepared to see change happening, if that's being communicated to them, And the way before that change happens, then that makes it more easier for them to confront it and to roll with it.

Rebecca Cribbin
Exactly. Enjoy it. Yeah, roll with it. That's exactly right. You have to roll with it. Otherwise, it knocks you flat as you go straight up. No, it's like when you jump, stunt people, when they jump and roll, I think that's what we do every day in our businesses. We jump and roll rather than fall flat on our faces, which is interesting because number 11 is more wand and less whip. So by that, I mean be kind to yourself. If you fail, which you will, and if you make mistakes, which you must in order to learn, hopefully less, because there's people like you and I out in the industry that have got the runs on the board, that are helping people to make less mistakes and learn from our lessons rather than have to learn the hard way from their own. But if you do, and you will, pick yourself up, shake yourself off, build an armor and a thick skin, you're likely to be your own worst critic anyway, because you're an entrepreneur and a risk taker, and create fabulousness. And by showing your wand and using your wand over yourself, your team, your guests, your owners, and less whip.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, be kind to yourself.

Rebecca Cribbin
So number 11 is be kind to yourself and everyone else. Use more of the wand and less of the whip.

Heather Bayer
I like putting it like that. It makes me think of Harry Potter and wands and things.

Rebecca Cribbin
It probably is a bit like that.

Rebecca Cribbin
Number 12, which is the final one, is be patient. That was my biggest struggle, I think. I wanted everything now, and I wanted everybody to deliver as quickly as I could. It's the old Tortoise and the Hare story, isn't it? That many of us...., perhaps even our youngest industry people probably don't even know the Tortoise and the Hair story. I'm not going to reiterate it now, but I think we, as an industry, are so lucky. We're building an asset as business owners. We've got to remember that we're building an asset, a fabulous asset. I know you do sessions that I've listened to about building it and then being able to benefit from selling out of it and how to do that. But we're creating intergenerational wealth or a great retirement fund so that we can go around the country in an RV and enjoy ourselves. But be patient because it all takes time, and then we can go on and spend the kids inheritance, Heather, before we have to give it to them. Know what your business is worth, a little pressure along the way is okay because pressure creates diamonds, and we are creating a diamond asset by building our short-term rental businesses, which are very saleable.

Rebecca Cribbin
Good things come to those Those who wait, my mother used to say to me, a very old fashioned saying, We're in it for the long game, and it does take time. I think the longer the time it takes to build, the more solid it appears to be. I think you and I having these long term businesses, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20 years, they're a really good asset now. Whereas if you build them very quickly, Many of my owners and many of your owners and my friends that we've grown together over 12 and 13 years. They stick by you and they support you even when times are tough like COVID, and you have to pretty much shut down your businesses. So you have to be patient and what you're building is a diamond. So the pressure that you feel is okay because the end game is amazing. And I've built a cracking business that now supports my whole family beautifully and the lifestyle that I now enjoy. It was really, really hard work. I think for the first eight years, seven years, I think the seven-year-itch is appropriate in business as well as relationships. So I think seven years, you get to a point where you've worked your butt off and your business is probably set up to give you the time that you want to be able to enjoy.

Rebecca Cribbin
But it also comes back to number two, which is make the time now to do those special important things. Be patient is number 12. Those are my 12 lessons. 12 of hundreds of thousands of lessons, but they're the pertinent ones that I think really, when I reflect, I go, yes, if I'd have been better at all those things, I probably would have had a better, more profitable, even better, even more profitable, even more your freedom giving business.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. And I think a lot of people are doing a lot of reflection now. With Brooke Pfautz putting out his book, Vacation Rental Secrets, where he asked so many property managers what mistakes they had made. And in fact, what they came up with, most of them, was what we could have done better. And I love that last one, be patient, because I knew when we started our business that we were going to sell it one day. But it wasn't going... It's not a pop-up shop. It's not one of these... It's not something that you're going to start up and then get rid of in three years time. It's not that type of business. And we were five years out when we decided that we were going to sell, but it was going to take at least three to five years before we'd be in that position to make that sale. And COVID just happened to come along and upset the apple cart a little bit, but even so, because we were patient and we were well-prepared, we were so well-prepared for the sale. We had all our ducks in a row. We had all our figures.

Heather Bayer
We had the business in the right state for sale. I can't stress that enough for people is that you don't just wake up one morning and say, Oh, I'm going to put my business on the market. You have to do it over a period of time and be prepared for it. And that be patient is... It taxed me sometimes when I was thinking, Oh, my God, I got another summer to do. We can't do this yet, but we were patient. The other thing you said, which really resonated with me was, it's what we call, because Phil, my husband and I, we are SKIN'ies, spending kids inheritance now!

Rebecca Cribbin
The plan's got to be to earn enough money that we can spend a lot, but still leave them enough to maybe, I don't know....

Heather Bayer
Take a holiday.

Rebecca Cribbin
That's my holiday, so they'll be okay.

Heather Bayer
They'll be okay, yes.

Rebecca Cribbin
They probably won't have to work as hard as I have. They won't have to. I hope they choose to because I think it's good for the soul to work hard and play hard as well. So I do....

Heather Bayer
You've been monumentally successful, and it's out of that hard work.

Heather Bayer
So we heard at the beginning about your property management, but what about Holiday Rental Experts? What are you doing with that?

Rebecca Cribbin
The year 2024 is about Holiday Rental Experts. I decided, after doing all these talks and the like, that I could actually monetize my mistakes and learnings and lessons and all the times I fell flat on my face instead of did that stuntman roll. So now I have a few products in the coaching realm. So I'm not doing one-on-one coaching. I'm just doing one-to-many coaching. I have three levels of coaching that I'm going to launch in the next little while. One is a coaching program for small property managers who are just getting up and running. So it's called Focus and Grow, to help small property managers focus and do the right thing and learn from my lessons and grow. And then I have another coaching program called Empower STR Managers, and it's for, say, 30 to 200 properties. And then the next one I'm building is a Super Scaler. So to help people that want to be bigger than I am because I think I can tell them how to do it even though I couldn't do it myself, or I haven't done it myself. So we've got coaching.

Rebecca Cribbin
We're also building a outsourcing or offshore virtual assistants business, where we will provide short-term rental managers all over the world with virtual assistants, mostly in the Philippines, that have done some deep onboarding into the industry and understand and perhaps even have had some experience in the industry. People can recruit them, and they can either pay them themselves or they can pay us, and we'll look after those people in a call center in the Philippines. So outsourcing and coaching is our thing.

Rebecca Cribbin
We're doing a little bit of training in Australia, but that's just for our Australian folk, because in New South Wales and a few of the other states, Heather, I don't know whether you know, but we're required to be licensed real estate agents, and we have to do training annually in order to keep our licenses. And there's been never any short-term rental specific training. We've all done training that's about permanent rentals or sales, and that got a bit boring. So I went to the Department of Fair Trading who runs that training, and I got approval to build short-term rental related continuing professional development. So we're running that, hopefully, to 200 or 300 short-term rental managers over the next two months, because we've got to have it done by the 22nd of March each year. So that's all a bit of fun.

Heather Bayer
Yes. Never stops, does it?

Rebecca Cribbin
No, it doesn't. People can find us on our website, which is holidayrentalexperts.com.au, which is A-U is for Australia. I find when I say. A-U to Americans, they can't get my A. I think they think it's I, but it's A for Australia and U.

Heather Bayer
I will put that on the Show Notes.

Rebecca Cribbin
Okay, darling. That's beautiful. All right. Thank you so much for today.

Heather Bayer
It's been an absolute pleasure. Glad to see you. We will probably cross paths again in 2024.

Rebecca Cribbin
We definitely will.

Heather Bayer
At a conference near us.

Rebecca Cribbin
Are you going to Barcelona?

Heather Bayer
I'm still working on that one.

Rebecca Cribbin
Me too.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, not sure yet. But anyway, it's been such a pleasure talking to you, Rebecca. Thank you so much. I'm so pleased I finally nailed you down on this one.

Rebecca Cribbin
Beautiful. Lovely. Thank you so much. Have a beautiful day.

Heather Bayer
Well, that was a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Rebecca. She has so much energy, so much enthusiasm for this business. She always motivates me. Actually, if I feel a bit down, then I'll go listen to her somewhere. Now I've got a whole podcast to listen to, so I can listen to her, listen to her voice. It always lifts me up if I'm feeling a bit down. Ultra-successful, and I give her so much credit for getting to where she is today in such a relatively short space of time. So thanks so much, Rebecca, for joining me. I hope I get to see you at a conference somewhere in 2024.

Heather Bayer
So that's it for another week. Don't forget that in just two weeks time, we'll be kicking off our SSTIR-crazy month. And that is a month of five different topics, SSTIR, standing for Safety, Sustainability, Trust, Insurance, and Regulations. Each of the five weeks will be on each of those topics. You'll be hearing podcasts, there'll be panels and webinars and blog post, and we'll be talking about it across all the social media channels over the month of February. We really want to bring to the forefront these pillars of this business. So many people are coming into the business without even thinking about many of these things which are so important. So we want to get it out there that it's primary to anybody entering this business to think about Safety, Sustainability, Trust, Insurance and Regulations.

Heather Bayer
Okay, so watch out for that. That will be coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much for joining me once again. See you again next week.

Mike Bayer
We hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by Minut. Don't forget to check the link in the description of this episode to meet Minut and discover the best smart device you will ever integrate into your short-term rental business to help protect your investment and keep your neighbors happy.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week..