Heather Bayer
In today's episode, I'm talking to Lauren Madewell from Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. We're talking about making the business fun, office hamsters, the running snack cabinet, and how happy guests are the cornerstone of a successful business and so much more. This is such a great conversation and you're going to really enjoy it.

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. As ever, I am super delighted to be back with you once again. I've got a great interview this week for you. It runs to almost 55 minutes, so I'm not going to take up much time at all with an introduction, except to say that it's taken a while to get Lauren Madewell from Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals on the show.

Heather Bayer
I have seen her in so many places; on LinkedIn, on other podcasts, and on TikTok videos. She creates some great TikTok videos and reels, and she's out there in many places at the moment. Yet Lauren did not really get into networking and doing all this until she went to the Vacation Rental Women's Summit in 2021. It was only a little under two years ago that Lauren appeared on the scene, but she's making a huge mark on this business. I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.

Heather Bayer
I am so excited to have Lauren Madewell from Aunt Belham's Cabin Rentals here with me today. I have to say, I just mentioned this to Lauren, I said I am really late onto the Lauren Madewell bandwagon, because I hear nothing but Lauren Madewell in podcasts, in articles, on LinkedIn posts, you're really making a huge mark. I am so honored that you've taken the time to come and spend some time with me today, Lauren. Thank you and welcome.

Lauren Madewell
Oh, my gosh, please. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here talking to you; getting to meet you finally.

Heather Bayer
Well, you are the new face of property management, at least that's what I'm seeing, and it's what a lot of people are saying. We're at this point, aren't we, where there seems to be these two camps. There's the traditional property managers, and then there's the, what somebody termed the Nurus, the new people coming on board that don't think they need to know anything about what's happened before, and then there's you. You seem to be straddling that. You've come into the business with huge amounts of enthusiasm and motivation, but also knowledge that you've gained from your past, from family, because the business has been around for a long time. That's what we want to explore today. You're bringing fun back into this business and we're going to be hearing about it. So tell us how you got into it, because I read that you were doing air traffic control at one point. You trained to be an air traffic controller. How the heck did you get from there to here?

Lauren Madewell
Yes. My gut is to say it was easy, but when I look back on everything, it's just easy to see that there are so many different forces and factors in my life, propelling that decision at a rapid pace. In my high school years, in my college years, they were just on autopilot. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was playing sports. I was making good grades. I was just truly on autopilot. And I grew up just south of Atlanta, which is a very busy airport and airspace. And so a lot of the kids I went to school with, their parents were controllers. It takes a certain personality type, and because I was an athlete, everybody knew me, they saw that personality type in me and they directed me to do that. I liked it because it was specific, it wasn't vague. It was going to be a government job and the pay was just going to be incredible and the retirement was going to come quickly. So okay, they're telling me I'm going to be great at this? Yeah, I'm going to do this. I pursued it.

Lauren Madewell
There was a college in Georgia, I lucked up.  It wasn't too far from home, just a few hours. I graduated my degree in air traffic controlling, but pretty much simultaneous to graduating. My dad had inherited the business, Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals, from a cousin only two years prior.

Lauren Madewell
Simultaneous to my graduating, he moved to Tennessee full-time to take over the family business. He fell in love with it. He left his old job to do that 100% of the time.  I was graduating with a degree; I was just not interested in it at all. I knew I'm just smart and I got my degree, but I probably should not have been a controller. I was dealing with that. My dad had just moved to Tennessee. The mountains were beautiful. I was very interested in being with him. I'd always been interested in the business ever since his cousin owned it.

Lauren Madewell
And then I was heartbroken; I had just come out of the closet. So I was looking to start new, start fresh, and the opportunity to leave everything behind and move to these mountains and work with my dad at a company that was well established and he just wanted to make it better was just irresistible.  I did it without looking back. No regrets at all.

Lauren Madewell
A couple of years in, I took a year off, with his blessing, to spread my wings. Is this what I want to do? Do I want to do something else? I call it my sabbatical. After a year, it was just a no-brainer. I was like, I love the job. I love the people, I love the mountains. I want to bury my bones here in Tennessee, and work the rest of my life doing vacation rentals. It was truly,  one morning I woke up and I'm like, What am I doing? Texted my dad, Will you have me back? I've just been full force ahead ever since.

Heather Bayer
That's a fabulous story. I love it.  I always love to hear people that are following their passion, doing what they absolutely love to do. I'm guessing you don't get up on a Monday morning and hope that it's going to be Friday soon?

Heather Bayer
Yes, not like everybody else. I've had my weeks, please, I have had my weeks. They happen more than you would think, but I know I look forward to coming to work most days, absolutely. Even when I'm in a grumpy mood, it's not because I've got to go to work.

Heather Bayer
Yes.  So, tell us about Auntie Belham's itself. It's been going for how long? How long was it before your dad inherited it?

Heather Bayer
So he inherited it in 2009. He's had it for 14 years now, and it's a 29-year-old family-owned and operated business. It started off as just a little Auntie Belham's General Store. It was so cute. I can experience it when I close my eyes and think of it. The smells, the toys, the candies, all the stuff they had there, the cute little cabin that it was in. Then that was her family, my dad's cousin's family. Then she got her real estate license and she was doing realty. And so being in that area, realty almost immediately became cabin rentals. Then she bought out her family and then turned it into cabin rentals. Then in 2009, that's when she passed away and left it to my dad in the will.

Heather Bayer
Wow. It sounds like it's a really different company. There are so many companies in your area. I mean, it's hugely competitive. What stands it out? What makes it different?

Lauren Madewell
I have to say our people, hands down, it's our people. When you ask that, I just see the faces of my employees. It's our people, because we really nurture the environment of everybody caring for each other first and foremost. Learn how to care about each other professionally. We encourage personally, just rely on each other. Work together to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, so that we can play to those and we all accomplish the job together. Not only together, but because of the environment we're nurturing, get the job done with class and get the job done with respect. When you're all doing that together, it makes the job easier, it makes it more instinctual, and your homeowners are directly benefiting from that. When your employees are happy and your homeowners are happy and cared for, your guests directly benefit from that. It's our employees.

Lauren Madewell
We really are trying to hire for the long-term. A lot of our employees have been with us for 20 years. A few more have been with us for 15 plus, and then several more, three, four, five. We're giving them a place to settle down. Full benefits: health insurance, dental insurance, simple IRAs, we match up to 3%.

Lauren Madewell
We're helping to build their future here so that they feel that comfort, that confidence, that respect, that appreciation, and they want to stay, they want to go in. And of course, the more time they're there, the better they get at the jobs. Then again, your homeowners and your guests benefit from it. Sometimes you have to weed out people to create the best teams, but it's always been the people. Even when it's not a good hire, you learn so much from that to bring in the right person.

Heather Bayer
Your passion for your people is so clear, and I love the way you talk about it, that that's where it stems from. When I'm asking you the question about what makes it unique, I'm thinking about your guests and then you come straight in and start talking about your people, and that's where it starts from. That is a terrific take on it. In my company, we got our first employee in about 2008, I think, and she's still there. I sold the company 18 months ago and she's still there. Every other employee that we took on, they're still there too. I love to hear that. The only one that isn't is my virtual assistant in the Philippines, who was there for nine years, but she's now back with me.

Lauren Madewell
With you?  Oh, that's cool.

Heather Bayer
We poached her back.

Lauren Madewell
I love it.

Heather Bayer
So yes, I so agree that people are everything. If you have somebody in a role that they're not interested in that role or they're just seeing it as a means to an end and that end is not relevant to the business, then it's not going to be a right match. I learned a lot about this before I spoke to you. I say I learned a lot because you just have, like all of us, just have one or two pages in the book, Vacation Rental Secrets, that was produced by Brooke Pfautz from Vintory. Yes, if you're watching on YouTube, there we are. I will put a link in the description so that you can go get your copy.

Heather Bayer
It was when I read your Top 10 mistakes, and three of them were focusing really on your culture and on your people, I thought that was so good. I have to talk about that a little bit more since we're on that topic. You said "Not getting an Espresso machine for the office sooner. Enough said." I'm guessing that's you or is that because you need to pick everybody's motivation up first thing in the morning?

Lauren Madewell
All of the above. It's helped curb the Red Bull intake, and I do care about their health. I have genuinely enjoyed helping my… I love coffee, one of my true joys in life. I have loved helping my co-workers and employees evolve their taste for decent coffee. You no longer see vanilla, Dunkin' Donuts anymore. We're bringing in better coffee, sometimes beans. I don't know, it's just I love coffee. I wanted to share good coffee with the office, get their juices flowing. My dad, who swears he doesn't like coffee, loves espresso. Tell me how that works. That makes just no sense. It's like the coffee is coffee, there is espresso. I don't know. It just is a pick me up. It was fun and it's just a gesture.

Heather Bayer
While we're on that topic, we've got to just cover off the live plants and the office hamster as well. We always had a dog in our office. There was always a golden retriever under the desk. I now have a German Shepherd under my desk.

Lauren Madewell
What's your German Shepherd's name?

Heather Bayer
Britta.

Lauren Madewell
Britta? Pretty.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, she came from Egypt. She was a rescue from Cairo, a rooftop in Cairo in fact, which is where she was found. And she made her way to Canada and into our hearts.

Lauren Madewell
That's interesting.

Heather Bayer
How did your hamster find its way to you?

Lauren Madewell
Well, the first hamster, because we're on our second right now.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, they don't last very long, do they?

Lauren Madewell
No, we're talking about three years. Gerald, our current hamster, he has... We have almost mourned his loss many a times, but that sucker is still going. The first one was Annie, just like a playoff of... So many of us don't enunciate the T in Auntie Belham, it's Annie Belham. And so we just called her Annie. But one of my maintenance men, Dan, he discovered her in a cabin and brought her back. And we called the past three guests and left voicemails and nobody called back for her. You know, some dad was just like, I don't know where that thing went. And I'm not telling my family that they ever called about this.

Lauren Madewell
One of our maintenance guys, Kyle, fell in love with it because we were taking care of it. We didn't exactly know what to do about it. He fell in love with it. He offered to take it home. And when he offered to take it home, the rest of the office piped up and they were like, But we love this thing. That exact day, we just sent somebody to the pet store with the company credit card and said, Get a hamster complex, get some treats, get everything they need, and one of those balls so that can roll around the room and under our desk and trip us and stuff. That was Annie. She passed away, I think, two summers ago.

Lauren Madewell
Then within a couple of days, we went and got Gerald because we couldn't stand not having a little furry creature running around. We like the midget hamsters like the Russian dwarf hamsters because they're tiny, their poops are tiny, they're non-invasive. It's just so much fun seeing that ball roll around the office. Our guests get tickled by it. When they see it, the homeowners get tickled by it. Vendors will come in and asked to see it. One of our homeowners stopped by with her kids at the beginning of the summer and then proceeded to give their kids the best summer of their lives. And the other week at school, when the kid got up in front of class to say what his favorite part of the summer was, he was like, That one time I was at an office and I played with the hamster, that was his favorite part of the summer.  So it's just like everybody loves it.

Lauren Madewell
I've told this story too, that once upon a time we genuinely considered getting a punching bag, which is just so trashy to say, but to go get our frustrations out.  But having that hamster instead of a punching bag, to just love on and kiss is a much more positive substitute.

Heather Bayer
Absolutely. You said in your piece in the book, Plants and a Hamster have made us a better hospitality company. I think you probably really said it all, because, again, it's that knock-on. Is it through your staff being happier and having something to cuddle on rather than something to punch?

Lauren Madewell
Yeah. What do you have at home? Plants, animals, and your favorite coffee.

Heather Bayer
Okay, so you keep your staff happy; that's fantastic.

Heather Bayer
I want to move on to your guests. How do you keep your guests excited? One of the things that really bothers me, Lauren, and I've experienced it in the last five trips I've been to vacation rentals, and every single one of them has happily taken my money and sent me a confirmation and then nothing. Absolutely nothing until the day I arrive, or maybe the day before when I get the key. What do you do?

Lauren Madewell
I was going to say, the whole week after you're questioning, did I actually book that place?

Heather Bayer
Exactly, and the last five times I have done that, I've got in touch with them and said, Hey, it's me. I'm coming to stay at your place. I'm quite sure I've got this booking because I paid for it and I've got your confirmation of the booking, but I haven't heard from you since. Can you just confirm that I'm coming? I should never have to do that. But if I'm doing it five times in five consecutive bookings, and this is in the US, it's in England, it's in Europe, this is happening to a gazillion other people. What do you do between the booking and the stay?

Lauren Madewell
Yeah, we do quite a bit, and it's all through text messaging, basically. Texting is the way. I think the reason a lot of companies do this is because we know that people's inboxes are flooded, their text... Anymore you can get advertised through a text message. People hate phone calls, so they just keep it as a minimum. Hey, we did our due diligence. We send you the confirmation letter that's on you like, Hey, it takes two to tango. But there's a balance. You can overwhelm them, and we certainly don't want to. Every once in a while, you'll text a guest a standard follow-up, and you'll just get F-off, and you just send them a thumbs up. You're good. We don't have to talk to you anymore. Put it in the notes.

Lauren Madewell
But after booking, they get the email, of course, and the email has a link in it, and it tells them several things. It's a nice, crisp, clean, very simple confirmation letter, all the information, but it also has the link to our Linktree and to check out their free Xplorie tickets. That's there for them to expand on and get their imagination going. Maybe they will want to refer to that email at some point, because it's more than just a confirmation letter.

Lauren Madewell
But then we also send them a text message immediately and it's just like, Hey, thanks so much for booking. If you have any questions about, and it's like Mountain Roads, pet-friendly, WiFi, or something else, just let us know right away. So we've slid into their text messages not just to say thank you, but to be like, let us know if we can help you immediately. And we've passed off some responsibility, documented responsibility, now that's on you to ask if the roads are good and if the WiFi is good, and it puts something in our pocket. But then when they give us their email address, which they have to, they're signed up to our email drip campaign. So they'll get those. And I think our emails are pretty good. They're not overwhelming. That's standard. But about a week before is when we send them another text and we say, One week to your vacation to get you excited. There's our Linktree link. It has all sorts of stuff there to not only help them plan, but funny videos to watch, Smoky Mountain Road Trip playlist on Spotify, biscuits and gravy recipe, stuff like that to get them pumped up.

Lauren Madewell
And just again, let us know if we can help you with anything. And then we send them a text message a day before. I think... what's in the... I can't exactly remember what's in our text message the day before, but it's like, Hey, check-in tomorrow, just a reminder. So get your ducks in a row in this way. And then on check-in day, we're sending them a video and it's me. And it's just like, Yeah, check-in day's today. And I'm up at a cabin and I'm like, Listen, hard as we try to make everything perfect for you, it's not possible. But we are here, we're in town. Give us a call. We want your vacation to be perfect. We'll come fix it for you. No use in dealing with it when we're here to fix it for you. And so I'm also establishing a face. Our logo is right there. I'm smiling. I'm getting excited. I'm in a cabin, so it's relatable. I'm proactive and saying we do try to be perfect, but we're not. Again, passing off that responsibility of, I want to make it perfect, but that's on you to help me make it perfect if there's something we can't predict.

Lauren Madewell
And so it gets people excited and then feeling a little bit more in control. It helps them to understand that we are here. We're not like so many companies nowadays or Airbnb, where you just don't know where your hosts are. We are here. That's the process getting them here, and then a day after check-in, we text them, Hey, is everything going good? We're here for you. Largely everything goes good. But again, it's getting out ahead of them, again being like, We really are here. Let us help you. Again, putting the responsibility back in their hands to let us know.

Lauren Madewell
Then on the day before checkout, we send them another video. This is one of the first ones I ever made. I'm in a bear suit, and I'm like, It's been a busy day being a bear, I'm worn out. I'm sure you guys are worn out from all the fun you're having. But just a reminder, tomorrow is checkout. Then when I made this video, Airbnb was being dragged through the coals for having these atrocious checkout lists. I wanted to literally act out the checkout list to show them it's just a checkout list. It's not a cleaning list.

Lauren Madewell
It's not a to-do list. It's like, close the blinds, close the hot tub, put the thermostat on this temperature. Then I explain, we're only asking you to put the dishes in the dishwasher, so it's not stinky and attracts pests. If you had a good check-in and if you had an early check-in, it's because the people who checked out did this list. I'm educating them, getting out in front of them because so many people will be like, I didn't know I checked out today. We're proactive with that again. It really is an education and giving them the responsibility, saying, We did our due diligence, but I'm able to have fun with it, so that it is our brand at the same time. It's absolutely what people will remember. The feedback on it has just been awesome, because it's been a part of their check-in and checkout experience.

Heather Bayer
I love it. I love the idea of videos. Something you did say almost as a throw away, you talked about an email drip campaign.

Lauren Madewell
Yeah.

Heather Bayer
So could you just tell us what that consists of? Do you segment? Do you have different things you send to different people or is it just one general drip?

Lauren Madewell
To be totally honest with you, we have an incredible marketing company that we work with, and I leave that brilliance and science up to them. They send me their email. They say, Will you check off on this? This is the day and time that we'd send it out, to make sure I'm okay with it. That's just to be like maybe they're talking about our cabins and one of the picture is a cabin that's going to be off-boarded in a month. We'll remove that picture. Or I might see them, it's a blog post and I think it might be more cohesive in this order and I suggest that order. We go back and forth to perfect it. But as far as the science of it, I don't know a darn thing.

Heather Bayer
But you are going through this drip campaign of messages.

Lauren Madewell
Our email campaigns are incredibly profitable.

Heather Bayer
Yes.

Lauren Madewell
Yes. Email is big.

Heather Bayer
Fantastic. I've got to come and experience this sometime. Okay, so you've got happy guests. Love the video ideas.

Lauren Madewell
Thank you.

Heather Bayer
Do you know...for those people are listening....video is not difficult, right?

Lauren Madewell
No. I mean, Mallorie and I, we have a knack for it. We vibe very well together. We've got our employees on board for chipping in on stuff. I think we have something unique in that sense, of bringing everybody into the video-making process. But no, it's so easy. You all know how to make a video. Come on, you post things to your Reels. Your Reels and Snapchat all the time. You all know how to make a video. It could be anything. That's what I've learned. It can be anything. It doesn't have to be any sales pitch at all. I think we always try to cleverly make one, but we are not opposed to nonsense and just throwing our logo on at the end.

Heather Bayer
I love it. I've seen some of your videos. They are just really amazing.

Lauren Madewell
Every time you think, Oh, man, this one might be too weird, or it turns out to be the best response, yeah.

Heather Bayer
Perfect. Let's move on to owners. I know from 20 years of doing this that owners are the lifeblood. If we don't have the owners, the good owners of the good properties, then things can go south very, very quickly. Tell me about your owner acquisition process. It's something that came up in Vacation Rental Secrets several times. Certainly came up from me not being intentional enough about the types of owners we took on. You mentioned something about commission. You're not interested in that race to the bottom on commission. That was something that I heard of from owners who were saying, Well, we've had two other companies around and they're one or two points below you on commission. What can you do? We would say, Well, nothing. Suggest you go with them if that's of interest to them. What's your take on it?

Lauren Madewell
Right now, at this point in time, in this cycle, because this is just a part of the cycle, enlightening the owners on the nuances of you get what you pay for has had an incredibly positive effect for us. We are growing at a pace that I'm very happy with, and it's 100% organic. We don't have any homeowner campaigns going on right now. Everything is happening as a result of Google reviews, word of mouth through homeowners, through guests, through real estate agents, who see that our cabins are clearly in better condition than the majority of our competitors, which makes us an easy recommendation.

Lauren Madewell
From vendors in town that we work with and nurture really good relationships with, we treat them with just as much respect as our own payroll employees. My community involvement, me getting close with the people at the chamber. When you become friends with people at the chamber, people are asking for advice on cabins and rental companies. It's easy for them to suggest us. It's all just word-of-mouth and doubling down on our high standards over the years.

Lauren Madewell
So, end of 2020, the cycle that we're now in and how it'll play out - completely predictable just because of the inflation of real estate prices.  Then we took 2021 to really be open-minded and questioning our commission, our systems, our processes, our standards, our competitors' systems, processes, commissions, and standards, to really experience what these new homeowners are like. We took 2021 to essentially read the future, and 2021 was brutal. We didn't have our footing yet, but we were actively establishing it and learning red flags and green flags.

Lauren Madewell
And so we took 2021 to read the future, but by the end of 2021, we still hadn't compromised on our commissions, and now we were confident we weren't going to and it wasn't worth it. We were confident that with our 30% - that's what we are - we were confident, with that 30%, we could run a highly successful property management company, never compromise on our brand, have everybody taken care of, homeowner, employees, property. We were firm with that and at the end of 2021, we perfected.... it evolves, I still change it.... but we essentially perfected our documents, our messaging, our branding. We knew the portfolio we wanted. We knew the property type and the homeowner type that we wanted. We had it established with information that we would give externally and that we kept internally.

Lauren Madewell
We knew who we needed to be, and we doubled down on it through 2022. Right on time, maintaining our commission and all the standards we pack into that, and the partnership allows us to have with our homeowners, maintaining that has come full circle and now people are actively pursuing us for that program that we built. Like I said, growing organically at a pace that we are just pleased with, because we saw it and you question yourself all the time for your predictions, but we saw it, we were right, it's happening right on time, and we're getting the homeowners we want and deserve.

Heather Bayer
That's so interesting, because I think so many property managers go through this process of, you start out with anyone and everything, just come on in. I don't care, you're going to bring me money.

Lauren Madewell
It's what all of our competitors were doing, and we were like, Are we fools? Are we fools right now for not doing this? Yeah.

Heather Bayer
Yes.  It took us a long time to change the way we did things and to say, Okay, we're in the driving seat. We are in the driving seat here. We tell you what's going to happen, how we're going to manage it? We don't compromise on contracts and we don't make little changes in the contracts because you'd like us to. Other companies will do that, so we don't compromise. I love that approach. It certainly was one that worked for us.

Heather Bayer
Okay, You mentioned community involvement, and I'm hearing that more and more from people. You mentioned the chamber. My friend, Tyann Marcink, talks about this, going way, way back at her start off with Branson Family Retreats, that she just joined the chamber and she became a driving force in the chamber and she says exactly what you did. So she knew everybody in the chamber office and in the tourism department and in the tourism office that was open to the public. So if somebody came in looking for something, they're not going to send people to... well, they might just send people to the rack, but they're going to start out with the people they know.

Heather Bayer
You just mentioned that was working for you, and I'd like to step back a bit and say, how did that start and how is it being maintained?

Lauren Madewell
I had the light bulb moment at one of Matt Landau's Keystone Retreats last summer. They were asking, What's your next great leap? What do you want it to be? I knew my next great leap was community involvement for a few reasons, but I felt I had really helped to build something beautiful with my company, and it built on itself and it took care of itself. My people were taking care of each other. They got it. They get it. They're with me. I felt like I could step away from the office a little bit more and start spending time in my community. That was my light bulb moment that I was ready to make that leap. It needed to be one of the first things on my to-do list when I left that Retreat and went back home was get out in the community, do something, just get my name out there.

Lauren Madewell
But the motivation for that is, as a vacation rental company/short-term rental company, it's easy to be seen as a problem to the community, and it's easy to feel like a problem to the community, because we're essentially opening the floodgates to all these strangers coming into our town.

Lauren Madewell
I mean, hospitality tourism, that's the industry here. Without it, there's nothing over here. But 2020, 2021, 2022, the amount of homes being turned into vacation rentals, the amount of land being flattened to build more vacation rentals, our market is over-saturated. Short-term rentals grew by over 20% in a single year. It's easy to be seen as and to feel like the enemy of a community that when you're off the main roads and you're on the back roads, is small town. We don't have very many citizens. It's just like a few thousand. It's small town and it's southern, and they truly do value southern hospitality.

Lauren Madewell
There's a lot of history here, be it starting in the 1800s with the first settlers, to the Cherokee, our ancient history here, with so much history here, on this beautiful land that has the most flora, these mountains have the most flora of anywhere else in the world. We have just a beautiful, extensive spectrum of fauna over here. I mean, the land is beautiful. The land is a blessing. The history we have is a blessing. I want to protect my community, and I can only do that through getting to know it intimately and understanding how my position can benefit my community.

Lauren Madewell
After that Retreat, anybody I knew, I just let my intentions be known. Like, hey, I'm interested in involvement, be it like an association, an alliance, the chamber. I'm interested in involvement. It didn't take long at all for somebody to be like, Oh, the Pigeon Forge Chamber of Commerce has an ambassador program. We just got connected. I took on this ambassador program at the beginning of this year. I work on behalf of the Pigeon Forge... I volunteer on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce. Then I have 20-something member businesses that I have to visit quarterly. It taught me how to just walk into a business on a weekday and talk. I did that on behalf of the chamber, and I wanted to start doing that on behalf of me and Auntie Belham's and our people and what we wanted to do personally.

Lauren Madewell
Now my community involvement also looks like.... I just did this on Wednesday.... I just went into the Glades Arts and Crafts District over here and just started visiting people I know and introducing myself to new businesses and telling them, Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals. And now when I go in and I get a good vibe, I'm like, Hey, I'm in a position to send people your way.  Would you be interested in giving my guests a discount? And then I just plug myself in. I plug my guests in. Everybody benefits.

Lauren Madewell
This Glades Arts and Crafts District, this is the essence of the Smoky Mountains. We are a tourism destination because loggers would come to this area to log and they fell in love. Basically, short-term rentals 100-something years ago, you'd have to rent out a room in somebody's cabin, in somebody's home, and they'd see that you made everything that you had. And they saw it as novel and they would buy it off them and take it home. And then the locals were like, People  are willing to buy this?  So the next time the loggers came back, the road that took them into the mountains, they were set up with baskets and pottery and jams and quilts. So people wanted more of that to see the mountains and to buy this stuff. It quickly became a tourism destination.

Lauren Madewell
And now that all that arts and crafts is in what's called the Glades Arts and Crafts Community. But it doesn't really know how to advertise itself well, and it's very traditional. There's a lot of old blood running the Glades Arts and Crafts. There's some push-back on modernizing in a way that does advertise itself, because it doesn't want to be overrun. The whole vibe monetized essentially the vibe is because they are. It's just this beautiful Glades Arts and Crafts area that I want generations to return to. I want people to get a kick out of. I want them to get away from the commercialism. I love the commercialism, it helps me, but I want them to get away from that and experience the community, because if they're experiencing the community, they'll want to protect the community. I'm using my position to get my guest little discounts and specials in these communities, in these pockets with these businesses that I feel are the Smoky Mountains.  Again, everybody benefits. That's my grassroots community involvement is just walking my boots through a front door.

Heather Bayer
I love that. I know the area, the Old Walland Highway, that area, there's so many of these little stores going down there between Walland and Townsend and just beautiful.  I just love it. You walk in there and you're just, this is how it used to be.

Lauren Madewell
Yeah, right. It feels very old school.

Heather Bayer
Yes. We've touched on some of the things that you use. You use clearly a digital marketing company because they're doing email campaigns. You mentioned Xplorie. What else? What's in your tech stack? Because you did mention.... you've mentioned in the past, that you just have a very small tech stack.

Lauren Madewell
Yes, incredibly. It's still just our property management software, BrightSide, because they do just about everything. We use QuickBooks for our trust accounting, which we actually like keeping separate from our property management software, because it makes us more agile should anything happen. Then our texting platform. Then It's... like I said, I use a Linktree just to have our TikTok and YouTube and Xplorie stuff and discounts all in one place. But that's it. Instagram, I have access to Instagram. I love our TikTok, it's my favorite thing to do, but is that considered part of the tech stack? I don't know. BrightSide is a texting platform....

Heather Bayer
Does Brightside cover your operations management as well?

Lauren Madewell
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's reservations, it builds out our integrations with Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com. Should we want to work with anybody, it builds out all those integrations. It is our work orders and our key data dashboard. It's marketing reports. It is accounting reports. It's homeowner statements. I mean, it's everything. It leaves us wanting for nothing.

Heather Bayer
Perfect.

Lauren Madewell
If I have an idea of like, Hey, I would love to do this for Auntie Belham's. This isn't a 'fix what's broken thing', I would love this. But right now I'd have to incorporate in another company or take on this whole task myself. Is this something that y'all could do and build out? Sometimes they can like this, and sometimes they take a year or so, but they just are receptive. And if they think, Oh, if one property management company can benefit from it, all can, so they expedite it. And again, they just leave us wanting for nothing. And they are working on getting text messages directly through BrightSide, which would be great, because it could directly link our reservations to our texting and not have it in two different places. They are working on that. But I'm not in a rush to fix what's broken, but they're trying to be everything.

Heather Bayer
I love the fact you mentioned that 'Ignoring free demo offers' was a mistake. Clearly, you like to do the demos.

Lauren Madewell
It's a way to get to know people. You're going to see those people at conferences. It's a way to get to know people. There's a very high likelihood we've come across each other on LinkedIn in some way, shape or form, or somebody I know knows them. Yeah, it helps me to network. That's community involvement in a sense. Then I just learn what's out there, what my options are. Do I need something that I didn't know I needed, or are we doing things exactly as we should be? It just offers a tremendous amount of perspective.

Lauren Madewell
I don't love them. I know that I like to get to know people and learn people. And many a times I'm just like, Hey, you know what? I'm not in the headspace for this meeting later today, are you okay to reschedule? Because I'm always upfront saying, I don't need this product, but if you are interested in sharing your time, I'd like to get to know you.

Heather Bayer
I like that. I like that approach. I really do. And it's a good segue, actually, into last question, which is about conferences and networking, because this is where it all started for you, really, in terms of getting to know people in this industry. Just backtrack a bit to the Vacation Rental Women's Summit in 2021.

Lauren Madewell
I would say I was asleep at this point in time. Not really asleep, I was in the trenches, I had my head down, I was in the sauce, this was 2021. Again, we were doing our best to try and figure out what's going on with this industry, with our market, with the cycle. We were trying to read the future in 2021, so I was in it. For that reason, I was like, I need to plug in and get involved with these conferences. And I knew enough people at this point who were going to the conferences. And I'd been to a VRMA and I'd been to a ResFest, which I really enjoyed. But I was looking for what conference to do beyond just VRMA in 2021, which we finally were able to do stuff again after the quarantine. And so, I mean.... Vacation Rental Women's Summit.... it's everything I love. It's vacation rentals, female empowerment. I knew of Amy Hinote. She'd come to Gatlinburg and done VRM Intel before, VRM Intel- Live. And she was very well respected. And I think I knew somebody who had been before and they were like, This is epic. These are actually really awesome.

Lauren Madewell
And so I mean, it was just like, Duh. And I told my dad I was like, This is what I'm doing. My dad is the owner of Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals, and because I'd never really asked for much investment in 'me' before in my growth -  before I was trying to grow everybody else. So I told him what I would be doing, that this is for my growth. Anyway, I went. It was just me. My sister wasn't in the business yet, and my dad wasn't very interested in A Women's Summit.... I don't know why. And so it was just me. And Amber Hurdle was doing the keynote. And I had actually seen her before because I think Amy had hired her and Velvet Machete to do something with the VRM Intel that was in Gatlinburg, if my memory serves me correctly. So I was like, Oh, I recognized her, which got me a little excited.

Lauren Madewell
And I was chatting with the people at my table. But Amber Hurdle's keynote was just out of this world. She was just painting the picture of, Men find it so easy to take chances and take risks.  They always seem to have 100% confidence in themselves. Then, even when they fail, it's so easy for them to clean it off and move on. Whereas, women, we're calculated, we think about things, we like to be very intentional before we do things, and there are strengths and weaknesses in that. But where it is easy to find weaknesses with women so often, is that we are not inherently on each other's team and supporting each other. In fact, we can get very catty and very competitive. You combine that with our lack of confidence going forward sometimes. It can be a recipe for disaster. She got out in front of that to just be like, You've got to destroy that norm. We are all here together, women of our industry. You will never experience a safer environment. It'll be hard to experience a more empowering environment. We're all here doing the same thing with the same intentions, show love to each other, social support to each other, get each other hyped up because this industry is better when the women are better together.

Lauren Madewell
Oh, she just nailed it. And then she ended on something, I can't remember the line, and then a gospel choir busted the door and started singing.  So it just turned into this next level experience. Champagne brunch.... It's gorgeous. I mean, Amy just doing it up, making us feel like pure royalty. And so it just got started on the most epic note. We were all equally collectively excited and ready to support each other and just chitchat and talk and no boundaries. That was the feeling from the whole thing. Xplorie had invited me to be on a panel; I'd never been on a panel before. They invited me to be on a panel about guest experience. I was with Sarah Bradford, Alex Huesner, and a couple others I'm forgetting right now. I had met Alex before, but suffice it to say it was a good crowd to be sharing a stage with. As nervous as I was, it came natural to talk in front of people and to share my experience and to riff off of the people you were with. Then I got a taste for talking to the people and sharing my experience, and I really liked it. People were coming up to me just to ask questions about the guest experience or to say, I like that you did this, I like that you did that.

Lauren Madewell
I started establishing connections, getting phone numbers. It just changed the way I thought about how to do my day-to-day. A big one was, Hey, are you on LinkedIn? I'm like, No, I'm not. They were like, You're crazy. You're crazy. Join LinkedIn. Of course, then that was Pandora's Box. I had connections from the Women's Summit. Those connections were helping me make more connections. The algorithms were at work, and I just started  getting to know people. I realized, Oh, my gosh, people are just as lovely. They love to love. They're passionate. We've got great senses of humor. We like to have a good time, eat and drink and be together. And I was like, I'm going to go 200% into this.

Lauren Madewell
Oh, and then there was something else.... I give Amber Hurdle a hard time for this. I went to one of her speeches, and that was the real game-changer for me and how I think about myself and what I'm capable of. Because she said something like, just something about taking things to the next level or really improving yourself... You can't do it with your same old, same old, Ford engine. You need a Ferrari engine.

Lauren Madewell
And I've told her... I've told her this many times before. I thought that was one of the tackiest things I'd ever heard. It rubbed me the wrong way instantly, but I never forgot it. And within about a month, I was like, Okay, but hold on. I can put a Ferrari engine in my Ford truck body, and then I can be who I want to be. I wear the hat. I stay pretty casual. I stay who I am, but I'm always focusing on the next thing.

Lauren Madewell
The Women's Summit, just so many light bulb moments that day. It was because of the environment that Amy High Note nurtures.

Heather Bayer
Well, I think if Amy wanted a single promotion for the Vacation Rental Women's Summit that will take place in Nashville in December of this year, then that's it. There will be link to the summit in the Show Notes. I'm encouraging, and I'm sure you are too, Lauren, anybody that's listening, male or female, to register for the Women's Summit. It's going to be awesome this year. Of course, it leads straight into the DARM Conference. Come for four days. Come for the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Maybe it's Friday as well. Yeah, come for the duration. I've booked in right through Monday to Friday. It's going to be pretty awesome again this year.

Lauren Madewell
Yeah, and let's give Amy a round of applause for having them be back to back. Thank God. You don't have to sit here in this hustle here. That's so awesome. Classy move on her part for that.

Heather Bayer
Absolutely.

Lauren Madewell
If you guys are into the idea of empowerment within vacation rentals, not some passive experience, but truly empowerment of passion within vacation rentals, it's the Women's Summit. That's the one.

Heather Bayer
Lauren, your passion just shines. I'm sure anybody listening to this is going away from it feeling a lot better than they were when they came in to listening to this. I just want to thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a long time coming, and I keep saying, Lauren Madewell, I've really got to get her on the show. I'm so glad we've had this opportunity. I can't wait to meet you face to face in November. That's going to be awesome. I do believe that Amber is going to be headlining again, so that's something to look forward to. I saw her in Miami at the Book Direct Show last November, and she appeared in these gold boots and she strutted down onto the stage. Then, of course, there was the music as well that came after. This is the opening, the opening. Then everybody's up and dancing. What a great way of starting a conference. Hopefully, that's going to be reenacted. I will see you there.

Lauren Madewell
I'll see you at the Women's Summit?

Heather Bayer
Oh, yeah.

Lauren Madewell
Yes, yes, yes.  Look forward to that hug.

Heather Bayer
I would not be missing that one. So thank you, thank you so much for joining me. It's been such a pleasure having you with me.

Lauren Madewell
Thanks for giving me a place to pour my hard out, Heather.

Heather Bayer
Oh, my gosh, that must be among my top, my favorite, interviews ever. What a star Lauren is. As I said at the beginning, she is really bridging this gap between the people who've been in this industry for decades and those who are just upcoming. Then there is Lauren who is bringing the enthusiasm of youth and just so much inspiration, but yet she is drawing on knowledge and experience that she's had from over the years and that she's got from other people as well. That to me is the epitome of the modern property manager. Thank you so much, Lauren, for joining me.

Heather Bayer
Okay, folks, that is it for another week. I hope you are already catching on to The Tipping Point, which is the episode of the podcast that now goes out every Monday morning. That episode is all about education. It's 10 minutes, maybe 12 minutes at most. The purpose of it is to bring you bite-size pieces of education on a specific topic. If you have not subscribed yet to the podcast, or with The Tipping Point as well as the podcast, you can find them on YouTube as well. Please go to our YouTube channel and check out The Tipping Point on YouTube because when I'm recording I'm able to use images as well.

Heather Bayer
Because it's a teaching series, then we do have slides and I do have graphics that illustrate what we're talking about. It's not going to be me every week, it's going to be different people. You'll be hearing from my son, my business partner, Mike, who is a safety expert. You'll be hearing from our other business partner, Jason, who is an expert in digital marketing. Plus, you're going to be hearing from some really great experts in this industry, many of whom have already been on the podcast where I've interviewed them, but they're going to come back and just deliver some great nuggets over a period of 10 minutes. You'll go away with some clear action points and for every episode there is a download, which might be a checklist or a workbook or even a course. We're going to be bringing you massive value with The Tipping Point, so please subscribe.

Heather Bayer
Well, that's it for another week. Thank you so much for being with me. I'm heading out to enjoy some fall, sunshine and colors. They're really coming into their own right now, and I'll be with you again next week.

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 nNtes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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