Mike Bayer

You're listening to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, andwe are proud to welcome back returning sponsor, OwnerRez. Providing a powerfuland flexible system for managing vacation rental properties, OwnerRez providesbooking and maintenance management, payment scheduling and collection, as wellas insightful reporting. OwnerRez will provide you with a long-term bookingfoundation that is scalable for your vacation rental business while fullymanaging your channel listings, but still focusing on your brand, your website,and your way of doing things. If you sign up now using the promotional codeVRF30, that's VRF 3 0, you can get 30% off your first three months. Make sureyou're listening to the mid-episode break where you'll hear some greattestimonials about OwnerRez and more about this incredible company. For moreinformation about OwnerRez, click in the link in the description of thisepisode on your smart device. Let's get started. Here's your host, HeatherBayer.

Heather Bayer

We all need help in this business at some time or another,and finding that help can be a real challenge. Whether it's free advice andmentoring, or you want to pay for expert training and guidance, there's a wholewealth of options. In this episode, we're going to explore what's out there,how you sift through it all, and what might work for you.

Heather Bayer

I'm joined today by my business partner, Mike Bayer, in thisepisode.

Heather Bayer

This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you upto date with news, views, information and resources on this rapidly changingshort-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years ofexperience 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 VacationRental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and I'm super excitedto be back with you once again. Hey, the end of summer. The season is over formany people, and I know it continues in some places into mid-September, but Ialways remember this time of year, the excitement as you got to Labor Day andit's like, WOW, we've done it, we've done another season.  For all those out there who are in thatposition right now, hang-in there. You've only got a few more days to go.

Heather Bayer

Today we're talking about learning and things to do withcoaching and training and consulting and mentoring, etc, because when I startedout 25 years ago, there wasn't any help. I have mentioned this before on anumber of occasions. Competitors didn't jump into Facebook groups then andoffer recommendations on software or their experience with vendors. It was areally closed shop. Today we are inundated with offers of help and support andadvice, but it's almost as much of a challenge now with a multitude of optionsfor coaching, consulting, training, mentoring, whatever help you're lookingfor. So how do you cut through it all and find the help you need? I've gothundreds of connections on LinkedIn that have the words 'coach' or 'consultant'or 'trainer' in their profiles, and some have a lengthy history in theindustry, while others have little more than a year or two. But does thatactually mean that one's better than another? Here at the Vacation RentalFormula Business School, our goal is to take a proverbial machete through thejungle of options and clear a path, so you can find the help you need with theconfidence that it will work for you.

Heather Bayer

Just a little background on my history here. I've had a lotof experience in the world of consulting and training. Before I got into theshort-term rental world, I ran a company in England called Leading Minds. Weconsulted with small businesses on their growth and then we recommendedtraining paths for their leaders and their staff and we worked with them over aperiod of time to help them achieve their goals. It was really fulfilling. Wehad a lot of success stories. Then, of course, I went into property managementfor 20 years. But since selling my property management company last year, I'vetaken over a year to transition back to my roots in consultancy and training,and we're really excited about what's to come, but more about that later, alongwith two very special announcements we're making. But for now, I want to goover to my business partner, Mike Bayer, to talk about this tricky area ofknowing when you need help and how to navigate through that jungle.

Heather Bayer

As ever, I'm super delighted to have with me my son and mybusiness partner, Mike Bayer. We do actually talk to each other every day, butit's not very often we sit together in this more formal environment and do apodcast episode.  It's always such apleasure to do so, so welcome.

Mike Bayer

Yes, it's nice to be back. It has been quite some time sinceI was able to grace the listeners of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. I'vebeen very, very busy in the back end of things and super busy with the newwebsite and a lot of the other programs and activities we have going on. Butit's wonderful to be back here again today to talk about education, which iswhat we do here at the Vacation Rental Formula Business School.

Heather Bayer

Yes, well, if we're talking about getting help, what do youdo when you want to get some help? This is not something new, this eagerness tofind some help. I think everybody does it at some point. When I started 25 oddyears ago, it was super difficult to get any help because there was absolutelynothing out there and everybody wanted to keep 'their secrets'; they didn'twant to share. Now, do you know it's almost as difficult? Because now there'sso much. There's so many people out there offering their help, whether it'spaid or unpaid or whatever, that how the heck do you find your way through it?

Mike Bayer

There's a ton of noise. The thing is, everybody's learningthat the key to any business online is to get out there with tons of contentand be larger than life. A lot of people are teaching this whole 'fake it 'tillthey make it thing'. It's pretty scary, especially if you're committing some ofyour hard-earned money and your budget to consulting or coaching or any ofthese things, and then you find out that you've wasted your money because theydon't have the depth of knowledge that you need to help your business. Butthat's what we're going to cover today. We're going to figure all this out.

Heather Bayer

Well, I want to start off by just sharing my own experienceof trying to find some help. I've just found this new software for editingaudio and video called Descript. I just absolutely love it, because for anybodywho knows anything about audio and video editing, you usually get this timelinethat you have to play with and cut out some bits of audio and insert your bitsof video, things like Camtasia and ScreenFlow, and then there's some otherreally mega video editing packages that you can spend years learning. Thissoftware proclaims that you can get in and start editing within minutes. Ileapt at this and in fact, it's actually really, really working. What you dowith this is just edit the transcript. And as you edit the transcript, theneverything gets edited, if you like. That sounds a bit odd, but I know what I'msaying. But the thing was that there is so much in this program and I do wantto learn it all and I'm really, really struggling getting help when I've got alittle question. How do I do this one thing? Or why does this not work? I'mspending a lot of time on Google trying to find out the answers to thesequestions, and I've got random videos and random tutorials.  What I'm looking for is step-by-stepinstruction, a course on how to use Descript and there is one out there. Butthat's my particular learning style. That's how I go about it. What about you,Mike? When you're trying to learn something, how best do you do it?

Mike Bayer

I have a big weakness. Maybe this is a typical male thing.It's like, guys, who don't read instructions to put together Ikea furniture.It's pretty much the same with me when it comes to software. I like to do a lotof trial and error. I like to get hold of something and just play with it. Thenwhen I get stuck, I then look up the specific questions as to the challengesI'm having.

Mike Bayer

Right now, with the launch of the new version of theVacation Rental Formula Business School website, this has been a huge learningcurve for me, because we've transitioned from 15 years of using WordPress tobuild our website, to moving across to a new platform called Webflow. Webflowis just so much different and there's a lot of learning to happen. I've justbeen getting in there and just playing and then discovering the tutorials toanswer specific questions. Now, I also find one of the easiest things to do isget involved with the community surrounding products. Something that we havewith the Vacation Rental Formula Business School, we have a great free Facebookcommunity where we send a lot of people to, to go and ask your peers,specifically with our business, with the short-term rental business.

Mike Bayer

When you have a specific problem in your business, communityis one of the best places to go because a lot of people have these sameproblems. But when you have a specific tool that you're using, it's alwaysgreat if you can find a community related to that tool. I would say there's gotto be a Descript community that you can find, because not only will you findother people using the tool, you'll also find the people who are marketingthemselves as consultants or coaches for that tool, or people who will do itfor you. Those are great places to go.

Heather Bayer

I know that in our business, when we first got the bigclunky Matterport camera and we had started taking it out and doing the videowalkthroughs of properties, and I really struggled to figure out how to geteverything to work and how to do it properly. Once I'd learned it, it was fine.Then my business partner, Craig, he was the one that was....  the moment, he had a question.... straightinto the community and he would find somebody who'd already asked that questionand the answer was usually there. So you're absolutely right.

Heather Bayer

You mentioned our Facebook group, that's The Business ofShort-Term Rental and Property Management. There will be a link to that on theShow Notes. We're at 4,100 and something members in there now and we have a lotof active members that are super, super helpful when anybody's got a question.I'm just amazed sometimes how quick people are to jump in, first of all, andhow comprehensive they are with their help that they're freely offering. Thatdefinitely wasn't there for me 20-odd years ago.

Mike Bayer

Yes, it's certainly a lot easier to find those answers.Having said that, there's also the flip side that, as we all know with socialmedia, everybody thinks they're the expert. This is where we get into having tobe mindful of when you're taking advice through community forums like that. Oreven if you're - and we're going to get into this in a minute to talk aboutconsultants - is to ensure that the people you're getting the advice fromactually have a background. They have some experience and they're speaking fromexperience rather than an opinion that they have from lots of things thatthey've read. I think we're learning more and more in society now to be morecareful about the things we're reading and listening to and ensuring that weare background checking these sources to ensure they are valid and actually canprovide you with useful information.

Heather Bayer

Yes, you're absolutely right. I mentioned in theintroduction that you can go to LinkedIn and you look at the profiles of… Lookat short-term rentals or Airbnb, and you'll find that so many people have thewords 'coach' or 'consultant' or 'training' in their profile. As you say, thisis what we're going to be talking about, is how do you sift through all that.

Heather Bayer

I wanted to start by looking at those three terms: coaching,consulting, training, and maybe we'll throw in mentoring as well, because somepeople think that they're completely interchangeable and each one will solvesomebody's problems in the same way. But in fact, the methods are reallydifferent. I did some Googling on this. Anyone can do this. Look at the differencebetween coaching and consulting. The response that I got that really resonatedwith me was, consulting tells your people what to do. You hire a consultantbecause you want answers to the questions, you haven't been able to find thoseanswers, and the consultant is going to come along and say, Okay, they mightnot tell you do one thing, but they might give you some different options, andyou're actually hooking into all their experience and their network of thepeople they know and the things that they know.

Heather Bayer

Whereas coaching, if you've got a coach, that coach is goingto ask you some provocative questions and get you to come up with the answersyourself. I've been through this. We had a coach, Mike, didn't we? A businesscoach about 10 years ago, and it was really helpful. But I found that a littlebit challenging at first because it was the questions that I found to be quitedifficult to answer. Do you remember that?

Mike Bayer

Yeah, because I think they ask you to dig deep. I found forus, as having a business partnership, you can get very set in your ways very,very quickly in terms of how you're running your business, how you're planningyour goals, your operations. Sometimes a coach can come in and just with a fewpointed questions and from a third-party perspective, they can really help tohelp you pivot. They can help you define a little bit of a different route tohead in. They can also help to dispel some of those preconceived notions thatyou had about your business. You already had this plan in your head. This isthe way I'm going. This is the way I'm going to do it. A coach will go, That'sa pretty good plan, but have you thought about this plan? Again, I find thatdifferentiation between consulting and coaching is very close. Consultants, Ifind anywhere through our business, there are a handful of tipping points asyou are growing. I find that when you get to those tipping points, it's tryingto figure out how you are going to proceed. How am I going to take the nextleap in my business?

Mike Bayer

That's we need a consultant. You need a consultant who'sbeen there before and can say, Okay, these are all your options open to you.This is the way you can go ahead. These are the things I would recommend youdo. Whereas the coach, they're going to be the ones cheering you on as you'remaking those changes, keeping you accountable, keeping you up-to-speed on yourplan. I think that it's really important to recognize that those tipping pointsin your short-term rental business career is when you should be looking forthis help.

Heather Bayer

It was probably about 10 or 12 years ago that we reached atipping point in our business. We were probably at about 60 properties, and mybusiness partner, Craig and I decided that we really needed some help. Where dowe go from here? Do we invest in a much bigger and more expensive propertymanagement software? Do we hire somebody full-time or do we take on somepart-timers, some virtual staff? That was the beginning of the whole VArevolution, if you like. How can we differentiate ourselves from ourcompetition? There were some of these questions and we went in entirely thewrong direction. I think we're trying to take a cheap route because the localChamber of Commerce offered relatively, or I say relatively inexpensive. Wepaid $3,000 for our consultancy way back 15 years ago. But this was somebodywho knew nothing about our business. She came and spent three hours with us,asked us a lot of questions to learn about the business, and then two weekslater came up with a report which told us absolutely nothing that we didn'talready know. It was quite the expensive mistake to make. One thing we werewanting to talk about was, should we be a full-time, year-round business in aseasonal market?

Heather Bayer

Because we're very much a seasonal market. It's a veryseasonal market in Ontario. Should we continue to market and keep our staffonboard through the winter? These are the questions that we were wanting toknow. She came back and she said, Oh, this is just a mom and pop business. It'sseasonal, it's just June and July. Lay off all your staff for the rest of theyear. Really, she said, You're never going to make money out of this business.I've never forgotten that experience because it was very disillusioning when wegot this report, not only that we'd spent a lot of money on something that wasparticularly useless and we'd made an error at the beginning in who we hired,but also because she wasn't giving us the answers that we wanted. That may betwo-pronged because it's possible that she could have come up with that answerand it was right. But in fact, we proved her wrong anyway. But it just went toshow how important it is to make those choices right at the beginning, ifyou're going to spend the money on that type of help.

Mike Bayer

Yes, and it comes down to definitely finding somebody whoknows your industry, knows other people, have worked for and with other peoplewho have been through similar problems. That way they have the experience tofall back on to give you that somebody else did this, this is how it worked forthem. Somebody else did that, that's how that worked for them. That's where thevalue comes in of hiring a consultant or a coach who have been in those shoes.That's the thing that we're seeing across the short-term rental industry now isthat you have, as you said earlier, on LinkedIn, there are countless peoplemarketing themselves as coaches and consultants. You look back through theirLinkedIn history and they started renting 18 months ago. They started withAirbnb during COVID and all of a sudden now they're marketing themselves as anexpert. Now, they may have some nuggets, they may have some wisdom, but are yougoing to get the value that you need from your business from that? It isimperative that you do your due diligence and look at the background history,connect with these coaches for a free consultation, a 30-minute chat to findout if they're the right person for you and get them to offer some references.

Mike Bayer

Bear in mind the references they're going to give you aregoing to be obviously clients that they've worked really well with andeverything's been peachy. But at least you can ask those clients or thosereferences some questions as to what was your experience like? How did theprocess go? So you can be a little bit more prepared before you make thatdecision. Don't ever go for one consultant at a time. Make sure you'reinterviewing two or three to try and figure out which one is going to work bestwith you because that relationship that you're going to build with a consultantor coach is again really important. If you're working with somebody who rightoff the bat just doesn't feel right, but you want to give them the benefit ofthe doubt because this is their job. I mean, I think you've got to go with yourgut sometimes. You've got to go with how it feels.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. This business coach that we had, we just hadthis one three-hour sit down and then a report two weeks later. That was it. Iremember we worked with Bob Sparkins, it was over a period of months and we metevery month and we were held accountable as to what we were doing. It was morecoaching than consultancy because Bob wasn't in our business at the time, ourspecific business, but he knew enough to coach us through it. But a lot of itwas personal development in our relationship, I think. I think I'm stillgetting the benefit of that 10 years later.

Mike Bayer

I can recommend to anybody who listens to this who is in abusiness partnership, whether it be with family or you're in a partnership withother business owners, I highly, highly recommend business coaching as a team.It's almost like therapy for your business. To have a third-party come in andbe able to help ascertain where the strengths and weaknesses are on the team.You'll be surprised. I was put in my place a couple of times. It's like 'stopdoing these things that they're not making you any more money just because youlike to do them' and you end up holding on too tight to certain aspects of thebusiness. Sometimes you just have to let go and either hire somebody for thatrole or share that responsibility with somebody else. Those are some of thethings that we took out of that business coaching. It was super valuable.

Heather Bayer

That was definitely business coaching rather thanconsultancy. There was very clear delineation between what Bob was doing andperhaps what a consultant would have done, because a consultant may have comein and said, Okay, the direction of your company, is this is where you shouldbe going?  Or, I'll give you two choicesas to where you should be going, and I'll work with you on whichever one youchoose. But yes, the coaching with Bob was very much on the personal developmentand relationship side and I loved it.

Mike Bayer

That's another good look at the differentiation between thetwo. A consultant needs to have in-depth knowledge of your industry to be ableto give you advice as to what the next steps are, whereas a coach doesn't. Ifeel a coach has the ability to get you to think outside of yourself, to beable to look at problems differently. They don't necessarily have to bespecific to the short-term rental industry to be able to provide you withincredibly valuable direction.

Heather Bayer

Yes, you're absolutely right. A consultant needs to havethat know-how in a few fields or in a particular field. For example, a revenuemanagement consultant could advise you on how to get data and ways to interpretit, and then they might recommend a strategy for that client to get results.But one thing, and I know you wanted to approach this Mike, that having aconsultant work with you is not a done for you.

Mike Bayer

Yes. I think that is something that a lot of people fallfoul of, is they hire a consultant thinking that, I'm going to hire this personfor $3,000-$5,000 and they're going to do all this for me. That's not the wayconsultants work. I mean, consultants may have some tools to make things easierfor you. They will be able to maybe give you some templates, things like that.But generally speaking, a consultant is there to guide you, to be your guide inyour vacation rental journey and walk you through the steps that you need todo, based on their experience with other businesses. They will give you, well,you will work with them to create a set of tasks that you're going toaccomplish and then you're going to work through those tasks between then andthe next meeting. Again, that consultant will try and hold you accountable towhat you said you're going to do and ensure they're actually implementing aswell. But they're not going to do anything for you. I think that's a reallyimportant aspect to get across.

Heather Bayer

Yes, good point. Okay, let's move on to training, becausethat's the third part. Training teaches a skill, so people know how to dosomething. Consulting is telling people what to do. Coaching is helping peopledo what they want to do or helping them find what they want to do, and trainingteaches them how to do it. The important part to me about finding good trainingis to find training that's going to fit within my learning style. Becauseeverybody has different learning styles, a good training should meet lots ofdifferent learning styles. Your learning styles are kinesthetic, hands-on,they're auditory, people like to listen, learn and listen, there's read andwrite and then there's visual. So a good training is going to have all of thoseelements. You're going to be able to follow along with somebody. You're goingto be able to fill in a workbook and do that read-write type of learning.You're going to listen. So there'll be an auditory component and there'll be,of course, videos for that video component. So if you've got a very specificlearning style, then you're going to look for a training course that is goingto meet that learning style.  If you'revery visual, then you want something that's just very focused on video.

Mike Bayer

If you're listening to this podcast right now, typically youare going to be an auditory learner. If you listen to this podcast on a regularbasis, this is obviously a medium that you like or prefer. Maybe you arelistening to this and it's like, God, I wish I could see Mike and Heather and Icould see their faces. Well, then you can go to our YouTube account and you cando this. We upload almost all of these interviews as YouTube videos as well, ifyou didn't know. Then if you prefer to read, you can go to the Show Notes andwe include the transcript for these episodes as well as some Show Notes withlinks. You can actually read through what we covered in the episode. Quite alot of the time, if the episode has something to do, we may have a download foryou to download and work through. That's one of the things we really try and dohere at Vacation Rental Formula Business School is to make sure we're coveringall those learning styles.

Heather Bayer

Having taken those different roles apart, the coaching, theconsulting, the training; mentoring, we didn't really cover. I've talked aboutthat in some previous episodes. Mentoring is usually an unpaid relationship.Your mentor is more of a guide. We're going to be exploring this in greaterdetail as we get towards the Women's Summit, because I'm working with some greatleaders in this industry to bring the personal development track to the Women'sSummit. Part of that is going to be sessions on mentoring, how to find amentor. A mentor is somebody who guides you along the way.

Heather Bayer

I'll give you an example. Years and years ago, I gotinterested in hypnotherapy, because I was seeing a practitioner and I liked theresults I was getting. As I do, I decided that I wanted to be one. I wanted toget into the field of counseling and hypnotherapy. My hypnotherapist became mymentor and he guided me in the direction of the courses I needed to take. Hesuggested different courses, different people that he knew. So it was more ofan almost a career guidance, if you like. Then throughout my training, hecontinued to guide me and steer me in the right direction career-wise afterthat.

Heather Bayer

That's just touching briefly on mentorship. You had amentor, Mike, when you were a volunteer firefighter and looking to get intofull-time firefighting.

Mike Bayer

Yes, that's very, very common for anybody looking to gethired in the fire service is that typically somebody knows somebody, either afriend, a relative, or even if you've crossed paths with somebody who's been aprofessional firefighter for a few years and you meet them on a course, youstrike up a relationship and you just ask, Is it okay if I bounce somequestions off you? As it turned out, I ended up having a mentor who was theChief Training Officer for a good-size department here in Ontario. Yes, I endedup reaching out to this individual and he was incredibly helpful to guide me asto where to go, the courses to take, how to prepare for interviews, how toprepare for the exams, and how to prepare myself for my resume to make myselfmore appealing to be hired by a full-time fire department.

Mike Bayer

I think that in our industry, in the short-term rentalindustry, quite often you don't realize if you attend conferences and younetwork and you meet people, quite often if you don't maintain thoserelationships, I think you're losing out on a big opportunity for natural peermentors. There's nothing wrong with meeting somebody new at a conference who'seither at a similar step to you, or maybe they are a few levels above you andthey're where you want to be.  There'snothing wrong with having a chat with them and just form a relationship andhaving a chat once a month and throwing some questions back, once or forwards.Those can be very natural relationships. You don't necessarily have to seeksomebody for a paid mentorship. I think it's just a matter of being comfortablewith being vulnerable.

Mike Bayer

I think there's a lot of people out there who are justnervous to talk to people and say, I don't know this, or I don't know that. Ithink it's okay. We're all in this together. I see this all the time in ourFacebook group, is the amount of people who just jump up and are willing toovershare at no cost. They could spend half an hour writing that post andgrabbing some links because they just love to do it. They just love to help. Ithink when you find those people, it's like be respectful of them. Obviously,they're giving up their time to help you out. But those are great relationshipsto nurture over time and you'll have great fun together. Your mentor will havegreat fun hearing about you and your business and how you're growing and viceversa.  You may bring your business up tothe level that they're at and just helping each other out at that point.

Heather Bayer

Yes, you become peers then.

Heather Bayer

We're going to take a short break just now to hear about oursponsor, OwnerRez, directly from one of their clients. We'll be back to ourinterview in just a few moments.

Chuck Kramer

Hi, my name is Chuck Kramer. My wife and I have been in the short-termrental industry for about seven or eight years. By the time we got to oursecond listing, we found that we were spending a lot of time on relativelymundane tasks, such as communications to and from guests, filing documents,tracking down rental agreements, credit card numbers for deposits, and thenmaking bookkeeping entries. I knew something had to change if we wanted tocontinue to grow. Then we found OwnerRez. As I trialed OwnerRez, it wasimmediately obvious to me that this is what we had been looking for. I was ableto automate 90%-95% of our communications and that freed up a tremendous amountof time. Then when you add to that the automatic tracking of whether peoplehave put in credit cards, have returned their rental agreement and all theother little details, including third party alerts out to our cleaners, we weregetting our lives back. Now we could focus on expanding the business. As weadded properties, we found that we weren't adding that much of our time. It wasas easy for us to manage four properties as it was two properties and sixproperties as easily as two or three.

Chuck Kramer

Once more packages integrated with OwnerRez, such as Turnoand ResortCleaning and PriceLabs and Touch Stay, we found that we could takethese best-of-breed tools and bring them in and actually save even more time,while at the same time improving guest satisfaction. We've never looked back.At one point, we were up to 16 listings. We've retreated some since then to 9.All of these are properties that we own and operate on the Emerald Coast ofFlorida or the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Heather Bayer

Well, that was a great testimonial and now back to ourinterview.

Heather Bayer

So, what you have to do if you are looking for some help,you've got to start by deciding what you want. Where do you want to be withthis? In three months, in six months, in a year? It may not be just inbusiness, but in personal development as well. So take some time, writesomething down, put those goals and objectives down. What would be the idealoutcome of having some consultancy, or having some coaching, or going throughsome training. Think about whether you want to get unstuck, or do you wantsomebody to actually tell you what to do next? Then, of course, if you're a leaderas well, think about how you can use this to help your staff develop.

Heather Bayer

You remember when we took Kaitlyn on, Mike, as our marketingassistant in CottageLink, and she had a diploma in marketing, but she reallydidn't have any knowledge of the rental business or tourism at all. I spenthours looking for a course that would help her out, that would teach her thefoundations of the business, because I think everybody that comes in thisbusiness needs to know the foundations of it. They need to know the history. Go back to the 1990s or maybe evenearlier, those days before Airbnb. I think it's important that people know,particularly when we're talking about something like direct booking, we'retrying to teach somebody what direct booking is, that actually was the normbefore Airbnb came along.

Heather Bayer

Just think about what you might want to put your staffthrough, whether you want to put them through training, or do you want to havesomebody to come in and coach them, or do you want to coach them? But I thinkit's really worthwhile getting all this down on paper. Think about what do youactually want? What do you want to learn, what do you want to change, and howdo you want your business to look.

Mike Bayer

We mentioned earlier on in this episode, and it goeshand-in-hand with planning out what you want for the future. I think you alsohave to look inwardly as well. Assessing your business, where you're at isgoing to help you determine where you want to go, but also assess yourself,assess what your strengths and weaknesses are. One of our courses that we have,the Short-Term Rental Entrepreneurship Course, is a great one to really helpdefine who you are as a short-term rental business professional. We have agreat personality test in there that helps you realize what some of yourweaknesses are and where to find help. If you're trying to hire staff, you needto hire staff that complement some of your weaknesses because that's how agreat team works.

Mike Bayer

In the fire service, people ask me about femalefirefighters. What's that like working with a female firefighter? And I saythat at the end of the day, as a firefighter on a fire truck, we're a toolboxon wheels. Our job is to go and solve problems. If you have four hammers on afire truck, there's only a certain number of things you can do.  But if you have 'tools' who are able to thinkdifferently and do things differently, the more variation you can have, thebetter. That's no different in a vacation rental business. You need to have adiverse group of people as part of your team. If you have clones of yourself,and we always joke, Oh, I just want more of myself. No, you don't! That'sactually the last thing you want. You want people who are able to look at thingsdifferently, look at problems differently, look at the operations of yourbusiness. Again, consultants and coaches will help you talk about those samethings. It's like, how do you find somebody who is your opposite? Becausethat's very hard to do. It's very hard to hire somebody who's your opposite andyou may butt heads. But at the same time, it helps you to have a much morerounded business.

Heather Bayer

Yes, certainly. I fell into it twice in two of my businessesthat I took on business partners who were complete opposites of me, because I'mhead in the clouds, I'm a strategic thinker, love big ideas, and I neededsomebody to be down in the dirt, looking at the details and telling me thatthings perhaps wouldn't work and what the shortcomings of some of these ideaswere. So, yes, you make some very good points.

Mike Bayer

Does it sell more chickens?

Heather Bayer

Does it sell more chickens? Yes, that is a quote that cameto me from a business partner years ago when I got so excited about my strategicthinking and we should do this and we should do that and we should buy this andbuy that. He said, When it comes down to it, all you need to ask yourself is,Does it sell more chickens?

Mike Bayer

Yes.

Heather Bayer

Think about that one. Okay, Mike, we've got some excitingnews. There's three things, and I think the first one I just want to talk aboutis Consultants' Corner, because we've been talking about how you find the rightpeople for when you need help. We want to bring some of the best into The VacationRental Formula Business School and create an area on the website where you cango and see their profiles, see what they do, see me interviewing them and someof their clients, which I think is super important. It's what we do with vendorshowcase on the virtual vendor showcase on the website if you haven't beenthere, but to tell them a bit more about the Consultants' Corner and what we'retrying to do with this, Mike.

Mike Bayer

Yes, absolutely. Before we even cover that, let's say thatany time you have a problem or concern with your short-term rental business,I'm hoping that as listeners of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, Heather ishere every single week for you with great new information. But if you need ananswer now, head across to vacationrentalformula.com, go to the 'Contact Us'and just ask the question or join our free Facebook group - The Business ofShort-Term Rental and Property Management Facebook Group. Because again, we canget back to you right away.

Mike Bayer

The reason for creating this Consultants' Corner is a littlebit of our concern I guess, of looking across the industry of the 'Nurus'.  It's a bit of a derogatory term, but it's thenew gurus. We mentioned earlier, the people who've been in business for 18months, two years, and they're branding themselves as a consultant/coach forthe short-term rental space and how they can help you with your business. Now,I think what we're hoping to do with Consultants' Corner is to showcase somereally high-level consultants who have been around for a while. They know thebusiness, they've had clients across all levels of the business.

Mike Bayer

If you're looking for that one specific tipping point inyour business, maybe you have a single property and you're looking now to finda consultant who can help guide you through the steps of moving into propertymanagement. Maybe you want to buy multiple, or invest in more properties. Maybeyou're trying to scale your property management company to go from 10properties to 100 properties. All these things require some guidance and someexperience, and that's where these consultants come in. That's our goal. Again,head across to vacationrentalformula.com, go to the Contact Us page and justfill out that contact form and let us know that you're there, because we wouldlove to connect with consultants in the business so we can begin to showcaseyour talents and find you more clients.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. There are some great people out there. I knowit sounds like we're writing-off a lot, but there are some really amazingfolks, people who are very competent and professional in revenue management,and in data collection, and in operations, because one person cannot do it all.If you've got a problem in a specific area, then you might want a very specificperson, or you might want a generalist. I just wanted to get that one out ofthe way.

Heather Bayer

Second announcement is for The Tipping Point. You explainthat one, Mike.

Mike Bayer

Well we've mentioned that phrase quite a few times in thisepisode is 'the tipping point'. And this is something that we've been… This iswhat, episode 509? This is 510, I can't remember. Anyway, we're well over 500episodes of The Vacation Rental Success Podcast, and we've been thrilled toprovide years of this same format with interviews and Heather having solos.But,  we've been listening to somefeedback from our listeners. One of the things that came across is to have morebite-sized episodes with a focus on certain aspects of the business. Not quiteso wide-ranging. A lot of interviews, they tend to flow all over the place.

Mike Bayer

As of Monday, September 4th, we'll be adding an additionalepisode each week to the podcast. The numbers won't change, but this episodewill be short. It'll be 10-20 minutes long max, and we'll be singularly focusedon teaching you one aspect of the business. There'll be some episodes that willbe solo with Heather or myself or Jason, our head of Technology, or we'll befinding experts, who are very well-versed in that particular topic of interestfor that episode. It's not really going to be interview format. It's going tobe very much a teaching format.

Mike Bayer

We're going to be including video and slides with all ofthese episodes. So if you wanted to see the slides, you can head across toYouTube, where we'll again be publishing the episode on YouTube. We'll also behaving with many of the episodes, a download to go with them to enable you togo out in the car, or if you're running or walking the dog, there'll besomething for you when you get back to actually get into the 'do' level. Wewant you to do something and begin to put some of these learning points intoaction. We're very excited about this. Monday, September fourth will be ourfirst episode. I'm very excited to get your feedback and we would love to hearfrom you at any time. Please, let us know how we're doing and let us know whatyou think about this new series called The Tipping Point.

Heather Bayer

Yes, just as a teaser, the first episode that's coming outon September 4th is about creating a business plan. If you listen to thepodcast enough, you've heard me talk about this on a number of occasions, thatit wasn't really until we began planning on selling our company that I realizedwe never really had a business plan in place. We started our business plan 15years into our business. We never looked back after that, because we updated itevery year and by the time we got to sell the company, that business planbecame the blueprint for our sales brochure.

Heather Bayer

If you've ever done a sales brochure for selling a company,you know you have to dig, dig really deep and it was absolutely invaluable.This first episode is just over 10 minutes and it's what you have to put inyour business plan. The download for that is going to be a business plantemplate, so that you can take a look at that, create your own business plan,even if you're 15 years into your business, you can start to create yourbusiness plan now and then update it every year. That's the first episode.

Heather Bayer

But that's just a taste of what's to come. So excited aboutthis. It's been a long time in the making.

Mike Bayer

Yes, it's going to be nice for a little bit of a change, alittle bit more focused content for you guys as you're listening to thepodcast, or if you prefer to watch on YouTube. We just want to be a little bit more concise and give you some reallearning outcomes to have in these episodes, which will go out every Monday.

Heather Bayer

Yes, and it's going to get us to 10,000 episodes quitequickly.

Heather Bayer

Okay, the second announcement I want to make, and this againhas been a long time in the making. As I mentioned in the introduction, I was aconsultant way, way back. I had a training company/management consultancy, andI'd go out to small businesses and talk to them about growth, how to grow andscale your business. It wasn't short-term rentals then, it was differentbusinesses, mostly in the healthcare industry. But now I've sold my company -it's been 15 months since CottageLink Rental Management was acquired - I amheading back to my comfort place, which is in training and consultancy.

Heather Bayer

I'm going to be offering, and this is a very limited offer,it's a pilot consultancy program. I'm going to be offering five people, becauseI want to limit this, a consultancy program over six months. That consultancyprogram will consist of an initial 90-minute get-to-know-you session toestablish what outcomes you're looking for, where you are now and where youwant to be. Then there will also be five more hour-long, one-on-one sessionswhere you get my full attention for an hour each month, where we will talkthrough specific issues that you're having, and discuss what changes you canmake and where you want to go, and then I'll be holding you accountable for it.

Heather Bayer

You'll get the email connection with me as well, outside ofthose one-on-one sessions. We'll also be having a monthly mastermind with thecohort of 'consultees', a cohort of business owners. We'll all get together andwe'll have hot seats and some really good discussion on where everybody is andhow we're all getting into our business. Then there's a whole lot more afterthat. There's a whole lot more that's going to be included in this consultancyprogram. So where can people go and find out about this, Mike?

Mike Bayer

For the time being, just while we're getting everything setup, getting the foundations in place for this, you can head across tovacationrentalformula.com/consult. You can also look in the description of thisepisode on your smart device and there'll be a link there. We'll be includingthat link every week from here on in. We'll have you fill out an applicationform to enable us to get back in touch with you, if there's something you'reinterested in and we will take it from there. We plan to get this up andrunning by the end of September and run for six months through October,November, December, January, February, March for our first cohort.

Mike Bayer

This will be an incredible start to your 2024 to have thissupport in your back pocket, especially if 2024 is going to be your year torock your short-term rental business. We're going to be there for you for thatsmall initial group. Very excited. So again, head across tovacationrentalformula.com/consult and you can get your name on the waiting listand we will get an application to you.

Heather Bayer

I am super excited about this. I always loved workingone-on-one with small businesses and just getting immersed in their businessand helping them find the right route, I guess. It'll be a mixture ofconsultancy - this is what you should do. But there'll also be some coaching inthere as well, because it's really important that everybody gets unstuck,because we all get stuck at some point. There'll be some coaching throughgetting rid of some limiting beliefs and moving forward. Then we'll berecommending some training within the Vacation Rental Formula Business Schooland as part of the consultancy program, you get lifetime membership of theVacation Rental Formula Business School and all the training that's going to bein there as well.

Mike Bayer

Yes, I think it's a phenomenal package and we'll beproviding you more information as the weeks go on. But yes, this will be a bigstep forward for us. We have always provided training in a much wider scope,but this is going to be great to get into the more one-on-one. That's one ofour goals moving forward, is to become more accessible to our listeners, ourreaders of the blog, our watchers of our videos, is to become more available toyou, answer your questions and try and get those challenges resolved for you asquickly as possible.

Heather Bayer

So that's it. There's a few announcements there. There's theConsultants' Corner. So we are looking for consultants, and once we've gotthose, I'll be working with them to develop their pages in Consultants' Corner.Then there's The Tipping Point and then there's the Consultancy Program. We arereally setting the course for the remainder of this year and into 2024 throughthis. I'm still working on producing some really good additional courses rightnow, as well as working with some great experts in developing some co-brandedcourses too, so that's to come as well over the next three months.

Mike Bayer

Good stuff. Yes, it's going to be a busy end to 2023 for us,but you guys will get to reap all the benefits.

Heather Bayer

Indeed. Anything else you want to add, Mike? I think that'sbeen a packed episode.

Mike Bayer

Yes, it's been a great episode and I always kindly ask youto do, if you're out on a run, or a walk, or a drive, obviously don't do itright now, but we would love it if you could just take a few minutes to go ontowhatever device you're on, whatever platform you're on, and just kindly leave areview for the podcast. We love your reviews. I think we're up to nearly 300reviews now, all of four and a half stars or above. It really helps guide usmoving forward. And also your feedback, any time that you wish to just reachout to us and let us know how we're doing, things you would like to hear,things you don't like, all of it is good feedback. Please head across tovacationrentalformula.com/contactus, I believe it's /contactus or our ContactUs page. Just drop us a line, even if it's just to say Hi and thank you, or ifit's just to say, Hey, guys, let's get to the point. All of those things aregood. We just love hearing from you.

Heather Bayer

i got one of those,Mike, years ago. Somebody said, Get to the point and stop talking about theweather. That's what I always used to open the podcast with, with what theweather was like. I have stopped talking about the weather. So, yes, I dolisten to you.

Heather Bayer

That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Mike, forjoining me. We've got some really exciting stuff to come and looking forward tosharing all those things with everybody.

Mike Bayer

Thanks for having me.

Heather Bayer

Thank you so much, Mike, for that. I do talk to Mike everysingle day, sometimes multiple times a day, but we don't often get this chanceto really explore a topic. Having said that, we have got next week...., ifyou're listening to this on the Publication Day...., next week, which is justafter Labor Day, Mike and I are heading out to Québec. We are going to acompany called Chalets Hygge. Kerry and Philippe from Chalets Hygge, in fact,Kerry was on the podcast about a year ago to talk about their collection ofproperties that they own in this small village called Orford in the EasternTownships in Québec. I just fell in love with not only the properties, but alsothe way they do everything, the way they manage their company, the way theydeal with issues and their communication, their guest experience, package, justeverything. I think is just great.

Heather Bayer

Mike and I wanted to go to Chalets Hygge, to go to Orfordand to speak directly with Kerry and Philippe, and talk to some of the peoplethat work with them and some of their partners in the surrounding area and do acase study on this particular company.

Heather Bayer

We will be six and a half hours, Mike and I, in the cartogether next week. We're probably going to talk about a lot strategy andideas. We were talking in there about always having different people in thecompany that have different personality styles, the strategy people and thendown in the depths and details people. Well, Mike and I are virtually exactlythe same, so we tend to spend all our time with these wild and grandiose ideas.Then we come back and we might share them with Jason, the third partner in ourcompany. He's the one that is more detail-oriented. He'll weed out the… what dothey say? The wheat from the chaff. But by the time we get back from Québec,we'll have been in the car for 12 hours, so we might have just a few more ideasfor Jason to sift through.

Heather Bayer

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I really enjoyedtalking about this. It is my Passion project now, training and consulting.Years ago, my passion was actually being in a property management company, butnow I'm just taking all that experience and wanting to share that witheverybody. Hope you took something out of that. I hope you'll connect with us.Keep an eye on our website as we develop the Consultants' Corner, which will becoming towards the end of September. As I say, if you are a consultant or atrainer or a coach in this industry and you feel you're of the caliber to beincluded in Consultants' Corner, get in touch with us and we'll let you havesome details on what we intend to be doing with it. I hope you enjoy the restof your day, whatever you're doing, and that you will be with us again nextweek, of course, when we start next Monday with The Tipping Point, and then, ofcourse, Wednesday when we resume with our longer episodes. Look forward tobeing with you once again.

Mike Bayer

This episode was brought to you by the kind returningsponsorship of OwnerRez. Don't forget, if you sign up, use the promotional codeVRF30, that's VRF30, to get 30% off your first three months of usage ofOwnerRez, which is an internationally recognized leader in vacation rentalsoftware. You can click the link in the description of this episode in yoursmart device or head over to vacationrentalformula.com/OwnerRez to find outmore.

Heather Bayer

It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there'sanything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notesfor the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and Ilook forward to being with you again next week.

‍