Mike Bayer
You're listening to the SSTIR Crazy Month limited series as part of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This first annual month-long event through the month of February focuses on the key short-term rental business pillars of Safety, Sustainability, Trust, Insurance, and Regulations. This event could not happen without the support of our sponsors, and we need to give a special thank you to Proper Insurance for putting their full support behind this online event. Proper Insurance know that short-term vacation rentals don't fit into one insurance category, so Proper developed a speciality insurance policy that covers both commercial and personal use for your vacation rental. The question is, are you covered? Contact Proper Insurance today to get your questions answered. Click the link in the description of this episode to connect with the team at Proper for a no obligation chat.

Mike Bayer
Let's get to the good stuff. Here is the ring master behind SSTIR Crazy Month and your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
In this episode, which is week 4 of SSTIR Crazy Month, Regulations Week, I am talking to Rolf Blizzard, who is the Managing Partner at Atlantic Realty of the Outer Banks. We're talking about advocacy, and we are talking about what Rolf calls the Seven Cs of advocacy. This is really important, because at some point in your time in this property management or short-term rental world, you will be faced with some form of legislation or regulations, and you need to know what to do about 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, and as ever, I am super delighted to be back with you once again. And this week is Regulations Week. It's week four in SSTIR Crazy Month, and all this week we're talking about regulations and legislation and advocacy and all things to do with what happens when you are suddenly faced with the potential, perhaps, of your business being shut down.

Heather Bayer
And more of that in a second, because one of the reasons we wanted to highlight all of the elements of this month, and those elements are safety, sustainability, trust, insurance, and regulations, was the actions taken by the province of British Columbia in Canada to limit short-term rentals to the host's principal residence, plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit. I'm reading that directly off the legislation. This principal residence requirement applies to communities of over 10,000 people, but it includes many places considered to be vacation destinations, such as the city of Kelowna. Interestingly, the city profile of Kelowna says, 'Cradled within a glorious range of mountains is a sanctuary filled with pristine lakes, pine forests, abundant gardens, orchards and vineyards, sandy beaches, and superb amenities. Stretching from north to south for approximately 85 miles is beautiful Okanagan Lake. It is renowned for the wine industry and is home to a top-ranked university, a world-class teaching hospital, and Kelowna International Airport, one of the largest economic drivers in the Southern interior. All of these things make Kelowna a place that needs a lot of accommodation for all those inbound tourists, for the people coming to visit the university, or the teaching hospital, and of course all those people who come in to this international airport.'

Heather Bayer
Short-term rentals, to me, are just an integral part of the fabric of Kelowna tourism. Unfortunately, property managers/hosts are having to shut down their operations by May 1, because of this legislation. So obviously, a lot of appeals in the process.

Heather Bayer
There is a conference, the CanStays Rental Alliance Conference, coming up in April, which will be addressing some of these things, bringing some of the political and legislative decision-makers together with the property managers and hosts who are being impacted by these decisions that are seemingly being made without a huge amount of research being done. They say it's all about affordable housing, but there's just so much more than that. So this conference should be helpful in addressing some of these things.

Heather Bayer
I don't know how impactful it will be to the Province of British Columbia, but we shall see. But we're certainly going to be doing our bit to help those decision-makers understand that there is more out there than Airbnb, which, incidentally, is where they get most of their information from.

Heather Bayer
Today in Regulations Week, I'm talking to Rolf Blizzard, who is the Managing Partner at Atlantic Realty of the Outer Banks. I came across Rolf because he was profiled in an article on the Rent Responsibly website, and he was talking about what he calls the Seven Cs of Advocacy. I thought this was really great. It was a great and understandable introduction to what you need to do if you are ever in this situation that the rental community of Kelowna is dealing with at the moment. I wanted to bring Rolf to talk about advocacy, talk about his experience of regulations and what we need to do to address them and to become active and network and lobby and be a part of the solution. So without further ado, let's go on over to my discussion with Rolf.

Heather Bayer
Okay, a really warm welcome to Rolf Blizzard, who is the Managing Partner of Atlantic Realty of the Outer Banks. Huge welcome to you, Rolf. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Rolf Blizzard
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Heather Bayer
So you've been in this business a while. You've got a really interesting story, I read all about it in the article in Rent Responsibly, but I wonder if you could just share with us the journey that led you into this business.

Rolf Blizzard
Sure. I actually work for a family real estate development office now. I've been with that company for about 18 years, and we have always had that common thread of hospitality running through the organization. We used to be in hotel business. We cut our teeth in the hospitality business and have always just been big believers in that space. It's probably about 2015, we got into the vacation rental space. We got into a single home with a partner, and it worked. It was actually a pretty large deal. It was a 28 bedroom house. It was set aside for weddings and special events. And that was our first foray into the business. We actually believe in the business so much now that we are building our own product in addition to offering third-party management for other vacation rentals. So we've been in the rental management space since 2018, and it's been a really good business.

Rolf Blizzard
Advocacy for me is something that I'm particularly passionate about, because in my former life, I actually worked in the state legislature in North Carolina for the Senate President Pro-Tempore, and was with him for about 10 years, working in the halls of the legislature. So that's why advocacy is a passion for me. I think people tend to be a little scared of it sometimes, and it's nothing to be afraid of. It's all about good citizenship, and anybody can do it. So that's where the seven Cs of advocacy came from. It just came from my time of actually working in the halls of legislature as a staff were on, and then also lobbying for EU.

Heather Bayer
So now you do this within VRMA as well, right?

Rolf Blizzard
Yes. Last year, I served I've served as the Co-Chair of the Government Affairs Committee, along with Scott Leggatt with Inhabit [Inhabit IQ]. Scott and I were old friends, and I've just really got a lot of respect for Scott and what he does, and the job he does with Inhabit, and honestly Inhabit's commitment to advocacy on behalf of our industry.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, interesting. I mentioned when we spoke before we started recording that I've been going to VRMA conferences for a long, long time, and I'm holding my hands up and say, I have not paid as much attention to the advocacy track that I should have. And it's only probably since selling my company that I've realized how important it is. And that's after years and years of seeing things happen in my home province of Ontario, and now of course, seeing things that are happening across the rest of Canada that I now appreciate how essential it is for everybody, everybody in this industry to understand what it is. But I think you just said, people could be... It's not scary. It's not something to be... Well, in fact, it is if you don't do anything about it, right?

Rolf Blizzard
Yeah, It's not scary. It's just about being a good citizen and making sure that you're the experts in this industry. And so what I've come to learn is that folks, especially on the regulatory front, because it is a political process, politicians tend to migrate towards voters. And in our case, our customers don't really get an opportunity to vote on folks that are in a position of creating regulations. And so that becomes very easy to isolate and disengage those folks from being part of the process.

Heather Bayer
Have you heard of the CanStays Rental Alliance Conference?

Rolf Blizzard
No, I have not.

Heather Bayer
Okay. This is a conference that will be on in Banff in Alberta at the end of April. It's founded by Catherine Ratcliffe. She's a Canadian by birth, but she lives in the US. She has a lot of political connections, and she wanted something that was different, different from the ordinary type of conferences. We've just seen the Short-Term Rental Wealth Conference, which I don't think they mentioned anything to do with safety, sustainability, trust, insurance, or regulations, for sure. But what Catherine is doing through her connections is bringing decision makers, legislators, politicians into this conference and bringing them together with property managers and independent owners so that they can actually have that connection and, for the decision-makers, to realize that there is a world out there beyond Airbnb.

Rolf Blizzard
Yes, there is!

Heather Bayer
And we're really looking forward to this because it's very different. It's a serious, serious event. And all kudos goes out to Catherine for organizing this, because it's really tough to get people to sponsor an event like this, and secondly, to ask them to ask the managers and owners to pay money to come and be part of it. But it's all getting them together as part of the discussion process. I think it's a great idea that she has.

Rolf Blizzard
There's a lot of fertile ground in those conversations for sure.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I wanted to ask you something that was in that article in Rent Responsibly, and it was about the differences between vacation rentals and traditional hotels, because we've seen this before - our type of accommodation lumped together with hotels. And I've seen it way back..., seeing it where people were talking about short-term rentals having to put in sprinkler systems and all sorts of things, features that would be at home in hotels and not in short-term rentals. Can you just tell us what those are? There were two types of rules, and you'd call them occupancy tax parity and regulatory parity. Can you explain them?

Rolf Blizzard
Yeah. So they're two completely different business models, but both delivering similar products. As I said, we were in the hotel business to begin with. And the business model there is, you are running rooms by the night as you would at a vacation rental as well. But your exposure in that commercial environment is a good bit different than it is in a single home environment. And from the standpoint of tax parity, we have always been very supportive on the tax parity standpoint, because the occupancy taxes are actually used to drive visitation to a particular area. And so be it a vacation rental, be it a hotel, I mean they're all marketing people to come to that area. So it seems appropriate that there would be parity in that. As far as the regulatory environment is concerned though, in a hotel a good example would be pool lifts. A couple of years ago, there was a movement afoot to create a requirement that said you had to have pool lifts into every pool that was in a commercial establishment. You would not necessarily need a pool lift in a small single family residential establishment. And so my friends in the hotel business, one of the things that they benefit from is they are not subject, at least in North Carolina, to real estate license law.

Rolf Blizzard
Vacation rentals are subject to real estate license law. So as an actor under real estate license law, I have the potential of having somebody file a complaint with the North Carolina Real Estate Commission, and the Real Estate Commission coming into my business to verify everything that went on in that lease situation during the time of their stay. A hotelier does not fall subject to that same regulation. And we in the vacation rental space don't go out and advocate that hotels should be subject to real estate license law in North Carolina, because we do see them as a different business opportunity. It's really no different than, if you think about from an elementary standpoint of moving people into an area. You have a bus system, or you might have a train system, or airplanes that can move people into the area. But then you also have the Ubers and the Lyfts of the world that are just a different business model, but provide another opportunity or alternative to moving people into a given area. So you wouldn't regulate Uber and Lyft the same way that you regulate the taxi system, or maybe not the taxi system, but the bus system or the air system to get people in and out.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Interesting. And interesting that you talk about the model in North Carolina. I mean, compared to Ontario, as a property manager, you do not have to be a realtor.

Rolf Blizzard
Really?

Heather Bayer
Yes. We're a travel agency. So we are bound in Ontario by the Travel Industry Council of Ontario, and you have to register as a travel agent. And they see it, as I think quite rightly, that it's the travel industry, not the real estate industry. But anyway, I know it's different, and it's different right the way across the US as well. Different states have different requirements.

Rolf Blizzard
Well, I have some folks that push back on the fact that we're licensed by the Real Estate Commission, but I've got to be honest with you, I take a lot of comfort in being licensed by the Real Estate Commission, because then I know the rules of the game; I know where the boundaries are. And as an industry, we rely on those boundaries and regulations to project a level of accountability to the consumer and a level of trust and safety to the consumer. And knowing that these are folks that are not just fly by the seat of their pants, folks. They are people who are actually engaged in this business, who have some track record and are doing things to a set standard to ensure safety and reliability in that system. So from that standpoint, that's a place where I think regulations can be a good thing and has been helpful for us.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I certainly see it from that perspective. As I say about ours, we were regulated by travel and tourism. So it's still the same, just a different body of regulations. And I do agree that some regulations are fine and welcomed.

Rolf Blizzard
The key on regulations is that it treats like uses and like products similar. And that's where I start to have some problems with some regulations. If you've got a home that is a single family residential use, regardless of whether or not that individual staying in that house is staying in a short-term basis, a long-term basis, or on a permanent basis, the use is the same. And so that use should be treated similarly. And so if there are ancillary issues or problems that come as a result of that use; parking, noise, things like that, regulate that. Don't regulate the type of person that's in there. To be quite honest with you, I see regulating the person's tenancy in there as really discriminatory.

Heather Bayer
It was interesting to... I saw something that Justin Ford posted on LinkedIn recently about the Idaho legislature. And what they're putting forward, from Justin's perspective, misses out on some of the safety issues, because what that says is that they cannot ask a homeowner to do anything, basically, in terms of safety. No additional requirements should be made. Justin's argument is that there are areas where short-term rental occupancy is very different to long-term occupancy, where people short-term, as he said, people are coming in, they drink more, they're on vacation, they're in vacation brain.

Rolf Blizzard
That's a very judgmental statement!

Heather Bayer
Well, actually, there was a study recently that said exactly how much people tend to drink on vacation. And it's way more than they do at home. So they're more likely to be intoxicated in a vacation rental than they are in their own home. But I found it interesting that there are the different perspectives on this business from a regulatory aspect, depending on who's controlling the legislature in that particular state or province..........

Heather Bayer
You're not commenting on that.

Rolf Blizzard
What was your question?

Heather Bayer
Well, it's just that there's nothing across the board that says, this is how we should do it. This is how we should regulate all vacation rentals. Is there a standard across the industry that we could all adhere to? Is that a possibility?

Rolf Blizzard
Well, I don't know. I really don't believe that vacation rentals are inherently riskier than permanent residential. I would probably push back on that assertion that, where they drink more, they do 'this' more. I'm not sure that I agree with that. I can tell you in my community down in the Outer Banks, we have welcomed visitors for years and they have been a value added to our community. They have not been a detractor. You can always point to one or two bad apples that spoil the barrel? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. There's always those outliers. But I don't think that it's necessarily vacation renters or inherently... You don't make the same assertion about somebody who's on vacation in a hotel. I haven't seen where the hotel industry is inherently more safe or unsafe or creating problems in the community than what a vacation rental is. So I've probably pushed back on that assertion a little bit. I think you can generate studies to say anything you want them to say.

Heather Bayer
Perhaps looking at it from a fire safety perspective, that means of egress is perhaps an important issue. Certainly in a hotel, they are safe. They have means of egress, and there's.... you go to any hotel room and there's a sign on the door that tells you exactly what you should do in the event of a fire and where to go.

Rolf Blizzard
Well, you've got the same thing in a residential building code. I mean, you can't just go and build a residential property. As I said, we're engaged in developing these properties all the time. We actually go to great lengths to try to make sure that we create multiple means of egress. The state building code, at least in North Carolina, actually addresses that well, and that you have to have... You've got your stairwells have to be so wide, your corridors have to be wide, you have to have smoke alarms, you have to have carbon monoxide detectors. And I have no problem with any of those type of things.

Rolf Blizzard
I'll give you a good example. In this 28 bedroom house, we actually chose to sprinkle the house, and that was not a requirement under the residential code for us to sprinkle the house. But you also have to go back and really start to think about some of these regulations and see what sense they do make. If you think about fire safety, for instance, most of the fires that occur in a residential structure are going to occur in the kitchen. What's the worst thing you can do with a grease fire? Throw water on. I mean, so the idea of necessarily requiring a sprinkler in a kitchen, that may not be the safest idea or create the safest zone for your traveling public.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, good points, and something that I know Justin Ford is likely to come back and address, I'm quite sure.

Heather Bayer
But let's move on to the seven Cs of advocacy, because I really want to focus here on what people can do when they are under, and let's say 'threat' of regulations. Like we were in Ontario with a little municipality or a township that says, Well, everybody else is doing this. We're going to do it, but we're going to do something different. For us, it was like whack-a-mole. The moment you tamp down one threat, another one would pop up.

Heather Bayer
At the moment, I think there are dozens of little advocacy groups that have popped up throughout what we call Cottage Country. They're all operating pretty much independently and hiring their own lawyers. It's interesting to see how they're not coming together. I know you mentioned coalition, and we'll come to that in a second. But let's start with your first four Cs, and you've got 'conscious commitment' and 'credible communication'. Can you give us a bit of background on how you came up with those?

Rolf Blizzard
Sure. The most important step in advocacy is the first step. And that's where I talk about a conscious commitment. I channel my inner Baptist. You have to be willing to give your time, your talent, and your treasure to this. You actually have to decide in your business that this is going to be as big a part of the business as revenue management, or as marketing. It's going to require dollars. It's going to require a commitment of your time.

Rolf Blizzard
And it usually will be at the top of the organization. The leader in the organization will have to make this commitment that this is important. If you don't model that from the top of the organization, nobody else in the organization will follow that. But you need to budget for it. You need to plan that there will be a price associated with doing this. That is a monetary price and not just a price of your time. A lot of folks out there think it will never hit them. It's not a matter of if it's coming, it's a matter of when it comes. But you've got to go ahead and make a decision that this is going to be part of your budgeted priorities within your company.

Rolf Blizzard
And then once you've made that decision, that's when I shift over to the credible communication side. Number one, you're an expert in this space. When you are running a property management company, you have to be an expert in this space. And in being an expert, you need to figure out how to thread the needle of your message to the right folks and in the right way. And sometimes that involves bringing in third-party data, being armed with statistics about your industry. What economic impact your vacation rentals have in your community? What taxes are people avoiding out there, or communities avoiding because of the presence of tourists in that particular community and what they're bringing to the table in the way of spend in the community? What occupancy taxes they're paying? In North Carolina, for instance, we have about a 6% occupancy tax across the state, but it is up to the community to levy those taxes. Not every community has that 6% tax.

Rolf Blizzard
We, along with the rest of the tourism industry, try to make sure that that 6% tax is allocated for marketing of that area. But our customers also pay a 6% sales tax. And that 6% sales tax can be used for any purpose that local government chooses for it to be used. So having an idea in the command of what economic contribution you're making in a community, I think, is part of developing your credible communication. Knowing what's going on in the industry. In the United States now, there seems to be this movement now to try to tie tourists to the affordable housing problem in a lot of communities. And so having studies out there that demonstrate that, 'Hey, this affordable housing problem is not being driven by the tourists coming into the community, but this is a problem in general.' Having that type of knowledge and information at your disposal and being able to use that to speak intelligently about your issues is something that's very important. And you need to have a little three-minute elevator speech, I call it, that talks about your industry, describes the importance to your industry and why it's value add in the community.

Rolf Blizzard
I personally think our space is.... of the array of things that people out there desire. People actually want our product. They want to come to a community. They want to be happy. In our company, we talk about creating life's most precious moments. We actually get to sell something that people want. You think about the things that are out there that people sell today, that health care. I mean, I'm grateful for good health care, but it's not something that I want to pay for all the time. Usually, if I'm consuming that, it's something that's gone wrong or been bad. But we're actually selling a product that people want and enjoy and desire. So having the understanding of that and creating a short three-minute elevator speech, that's important.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to take a short break just now to hear about our sponsor. We're going to be right back with more from this great interview in just a few moments.

Heather Bayer
As a recovering property manager myself, as property managers we always knew it was vital that homeowners carried the best insurance. What benefits do property managers get when they get their clients to choose Proper Insurance for their short-term rentals?

Nick Massey
The biggest benefit to the property manager of having Proper Insurance as a top-tier referral for their property owners, is ease of use. You know your clients are going to be treated and handled well. They're going to get a top-tier education and consultation on the phone, and they're going to be procuring the best insurance available on the market.

Nick Massey
Now, specifically to benefits to you, and kind of the why that makes us different, number one is every property manager is listed as additional insured on our property. That means when an accident or incident happens at the property, we are not just defending and treating or covering the liability for the owner, but also you, the manager. So you're not trying to claim that against your manager's insurance. We also have special benefits around marketing.

Nick Massey
We have a map on our website. Our website gets hundreds of thousands of visits annually. It's great back-end SEO. We'd love to have you on that map. We get clients all the time asking for property manager referrals. We break it down state by state and county by county on where you can help provide your services to our clients who are looking for a property manager. We want to have that mutually beneficial relationship.

Nick Massey
Last and certainly not least is our custom, one-of-a-kind, trademark, copy-written, can't get it anywhere else, endorsement for property managers, and that is that we protect your lost business commissions. If a property is damaged and the business income claim is paid up, we will cut two checks. We will cut a check to the property owner, and we will cut a check to you for your commission percentage of that lost business income.

Heather Bayer
I just mentioned about Ontario and the fragmented nature of alliances and what you have just said. You can't do this in a vacuum. You can be the best advocacy you want, but if you're a tiny little company in a very tight location and you're trying to do this alone, then it's not going to have the impact that it would if you networked with other companies and with other operators. You talk about coalition. That's one of the Cs on your list. How important is this? And how do you do it? Because I've seen these questions out there on some of the Facebook groups. How do I start a network? How do I connect with people who have already got one going and tell them that mine is just as good.

Rolf Blizzard
So my approach on coalitions is something we've been involved with forever. In North Carolina, we have what's called the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Coalition. Our company has been a part of that organization for the 18 years that I've been with it. The thing is, is we look for allies that are not necessarily just in the same industry space that we are. We don't see hotels as adversaries. We see them as an ally. We both are in the business of bringing visitors to our area and creating life's most precious moments for them. We just happen to do it a little bit differently. With the hotel industry, there are more things that we agree on than what we disagree on, so we partner with them. Other event and venues that are in our state, we align with our professional sports teams; Carolina Hurricanes, Carolina Panthers, Charlotte Hornets. Again, it's about providing hospitality. So we both believe in the value of occupancy taxes and what they do in promoting our area. We both believe in the same type of things as far as school calendars are concerned, and we use each other's political capital in carrying our message.

Rolf Blizzard
There may be things like the Carolina Hurricanes may not be quite so engaged with that we're engaged with, but then there's also things like ticket taxes that can be seen as anti-tourist or put a chilling effect on people's visitation to an area. And so we lend our political capital to those things. Our Travel and Tourism Coalition has private sports teams, hotels, restaurants, destination marketing organizations. And so we leverage each other's political attributes. There may be people that I'm particularly close with in the legislature. The Restaurant Lodging Association may have folks that they're close to. And we figure out how to speak with one voice and use our similarities and our desires together to promote the industry as a whole. And you do that by forming relationships with these folks over time.

Rolf Blizzard
I tell people all the time, you cannot practice advocacy from what I would call an 'emergency care mentality'. We talked a little bit about health care earlier. If you just show up at the emergency room and don't do anything to make sure that you stay healthy or doing the right things to live a healthy lifestyle early on, the emergency room is not going to be able to help you.

Rolf Blizzard
You have to practice advocacy with a 'primary care mentality' where you're going to the doctor every year, you're eating the right things, you're making sure that you're exercising the way that you should and lay that groundwork so that you're not just relying on that 911 call.

Heather Bayer
I love that. I was head down, because I was writing that down. 'You can't practice advocacy from an emergency care position. You've got to have a primary care mentality.'

Rolf Blizzard
Yeah, you got to have that primary care mentality. You got to be engaged. You've got to come back to that conscious commitment. You got to make a conscious commitment, and this is going to be one of your priorities.

Heather Bayer
Okay, back to all these little small groups. They don't have political capital. They're starting up. They're scared. These things are happening in their local community. And they see this, even this little municipal council, as this all powerful body that is going to take away their livelihood. What can they do? What would you advise them to do?

Rolf Blizzard
Well, number one, if they're in a community, then chances are they vote. And I can tell you from my days in the legislature, and my time lobbying, that the most fearful thing that could be out there for a politician is a vote. When these elected officials get in these positions, they want to please the electorate. And if there's a perception that the electorate is displeased, they fear that more than anything.

Rolf Blizzard
When I was working in the legislature, we had a senator that if there were 10 well-placed emails that his office received about something, he thought his district was falling apart. He had probably 65-70,000 voters in his district, but 10 emails that said the same thing would grab his attention. And he'd be like, I've got to do something about this. 'I'm hearing from everybody' - with just 10 emails.

Rolf Blizzard
But you've got to take that first step. You've got to send that email. You've got to come together as your group and come together on a singular message. That is very important. In North Carolina right now, in Buncombe County, there's an issue that a group of local rental managers have come together in opposition to a proposed ban on short-term rentals, and they're very well organized.

Rolf Blizzard
They've been meeting together. They've been crafting a singular message. When they had their first public hearing, I think they had a couple of hundred folks show up at the public hearing. And elected officials and even appointed officials see that, and they see the solidarity of a single message, and it has an impact. I mean, it definitely moves the needle. And as I said, elected officials want to get reelected. I've yet to see an elected official who did not want to get reelected. And if they perceive that they are taking some action or doing something that is going to result in them not getting reelected, it will move the needle with them.

Rolf Blizzard
But you've got to come together. You've got to get that common message, and you need to look for points of agreement and not points of difference. I think about the things that our coalition operates on, the Travel and Tourism  Coalition that we're part of operates on consensus. If we have to get consensus among our membership, if it's not a matter that we get consensus on, we don't engage on. But we work really hard to find consensus, even when there's some disagreements and nuances to our policy position that gets us to consensus.

Rolf Blizzard
And then you got to be willing to show up at these public meetings. And let's be honest, you're so busy working in your business, and most of these public hearings will be at seven o'clock at night. And it may entail you sitting there for three hours through all this dreaded testimony, but it matters, and it makes a difference, and it will move the needle.

Rolf Blizzard
But the other thing I talk about in the seven Cs a little bit is this idea of courtship. So I don't know if you know what courtship is. I'm a little older guy.

Heather Bayer
I'm probably in that area.

Rolf Blizzard
So that same senator I was I'm telling you about before, when I was lobbying, I was lobbying for our state Chamber of Commerce. And the chamber had this initiative that we were after. And so I had gone into his office, had lobbied on that issue, told him this was the marquee issue for our organization that year. And so that Senator went home, and he actually talked to some of the businesses back in his district. And he called me and he said, Rolf, I hear what you're saying. I know that that's an issue for you, but I talk to this family who runs this business in Goldsboro, and they said, Yeah, that's a big issue, but what I'm really worried about is X.

Rolf Blizzard
And so the impact of sitting with your elected official, not just during that public meeting, but on their front porch on a Friday afternoon or in their district and in their own home environment is very powerful. If you're showing up at their home, if you're showing up in their place of business, I mean, most of the time, these elected officials, these are voluntary positions. People will not take these elected positions because they're paid well. No.

Rolf Blizzard
But if you show up in their business or you show up at their home, or you show up at their kid's baseball game, and you're talking about these issues with them, it is a far more more meaningful lobby doing that in their personal space as opposed to doing it in a public meeting or doing it inside the halls of the legislature. I mean, it humanizes. I mean, they see it in their district, and they see the impact that it's having on the people where they're living. And the courtship, not just doing it when there's a problem that's risen, but being involved early on.

Rolf Blizzard
When I speak to a group of folks about advocacy, the first question I ask is, do you know who your elected official is? You would be surprised the number of times that from the get-go, people don't even know who their elected official is. So after I ask about, do you know who your elected official is? The second question I ask is, Have you talked to them in the last three months? And so even if you get the knowledge question right, the communication question, the number of hands goes down, and I'm like, well, why not?

Rolf Blizzard
I mean, these people are asking you for their vote. Of course, you can have a relationship with them. They want something from you. You should start to build that relationship. And then if you lay that groundwork today, when the time comes for regulatory activity and it's in your space because you created that relationship with them, you're going to have instant credibility, more so than you would if you just showed up because they had some regulation that they got cooked up.

Rolf Blizzard
And regulatory activity, especially when it comes down to technical things, is one of those things that as a staff member, everybody's always looking at other communities. What have other communities done? I hate to say that there's not a lot of original creativity behind some of these regulations. They go, What did they do over there? But coming back, having an establishment established relationship with these decision makers earlier on, being in their districts and them knowing that you care, you vote, you have an opinion about this thing, you're an expert. I think people underestimate the value of relationships. And building a relationship is so important from an advocacy standpoint. And that's where the whole idea of the courtship thing comes from.

Rolf Blizzard
If you think about any relationship out there, How do you go about building a relationship? Everybody has to build a relationship, whether you're doing it from a regulatory standpoint or not. I mean, as a concerned citizen, you should have a relationship with the people that are making decisions about how you have to live your life.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I love this perspective. It's not what I've really thought about before. So I think this is going to be so useful to those people who are listening. You compared advocacy to chess, not checkers.

Rolf Blizzard
Correct.

Heather Bayer
How does that analogy work in your approach?

Rolf Blizzard
Well, sometimes you have to play chess in three dimensions, too. So checkers has always, in my mind, been more of a reactive game. I mean, you're anticipating what the next person does, you're reacting to their mood. Chess requires some more forethought. You have to have a strategy in mind of where you want to get to down the road. So again, making the conscious commitment up front, practicing courtship, this whole idea of, back to the analogy of health care, you can't put the value of your health care, you can't put the assurance of your future health on just reacting when you're in an accident.

Rolf Blizzard
You've got to be preparing yourself down the road. You've got to think two steps ahead. You can't just sit on the sidelines until somebody proposes a regulation and says, We're going to do X. You need to go ahead and engage earlier on now when there is no regulation in play, establishing your relationship with the elected leadership now, when you don't really need them for anything, and then you can capitalize on that relationship down the road when the regulatory activity comes your way, because it is coming your way.

Rolf Blizzard
Make no mistake about it. I think people lull themselves into this notion we're in a tourism-friendly area, even at the Outer Banks. I mean, our folks at the Outer Banks have been for years, tourism has built that economy down there. And you would think, Hey, this is one of the most friendly tourist areas that there is. Surely they wouldn't do anything to damage the goose that laid the gold net. And sure enough, this past year, there was a little area in one part of the community where they said, We're just going to ban short-term rentals here. And it's like, You've got to be kidding me. I mean, the short-term rental industry, the revenue that's come off these properties has done so much in this community. And now you're talking about killing the goose that laid the golden egg on this. It will come, and you need to be prepared for it.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that's interesting. I heard somebody on a BC forum saying, We never saw this coming. And my thought was, you should have known it was coming.

Rolf Blizzard
Oh, yeah. It is coming because I'm back to what I told you earlier. I mean, everybody starts looking around to fix problems and, think about it, we're an easy target. Our customers don't vote for these decision makers. Our customers at best in the Outer Banks are there for a week, and then they come back next year. But they don't vote for these people that are making these decisions. And so we have to be the conduit for their voice. And so the only way to do that is to begin with your credible communication, begin with making your conscious commitment, begin by courting these legislative..., these decision makers, early on in establishing a relationship with them, where they know when you come to them, there's a sense of trust there. They can trust what you're saying.

Heather Bayer
You've created almost a formula for doing this, and as I said, in Ontario, while I was a property manager, we saw all these things happening and we dabbled, I think, in advocacy. It was more of a, Well, we'll just tap this one down and go on our merry way and that will be it. But of course, it happened again and again and again.

Heather Bayer
I love how you've laid this out. It's actually made it clear. I wish I'd talked to you five or six years ago when we were beginning to see this and we were hearing from owners who said, My Township has just banned me, but we're just going to go ahead and rent, come what may. We were a property management company. We were complying. We were in compliance with the local legislation, so we lost properties. But I think if I had talked to you at that time and actually gone through this, I can see it's a very neat way of packaging what people can do. I thank you for that. I just want to talk about your last 'C' though, which is not courtship, it's court.

Rolf Blizzard
The 'C' of last resort. Yes.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Does legal action ever become necessary? And have you seen any examples of this?

Rolf Blizzard
It is inevitable. It's expensive. I mean, it is expensive, and that goes back to the need for coalitions. I think if you're engaging on something and it's gotten so bad that you got to go the route of courts, it's the old adage, many hands make for light work. I mean, you need to have a number of different allies in that, because otherwise you could find yourself trying to instigate a lawsuit. I mean, that's a six-figure proposition from the get-go. Where I've seen it be helpful, for instance, our coalition is way in on amicus briefs with some organizations. I think that's been an effective use of those dollars.

Rolf Blizzard
In the United States, I just firmly believe that individuals have a constitutional right to rent their property. The ability to rent your property as a part of the bundle of rights that's guaranteed to you under the Constitution. And I think sometimes there are hills that you want to try to die on and feel strongly enough that this is a watershed decision for us. And so the key on that is you need lots of allies when you're heading down that path. And be realistic about you could win in the battle, but at what cost?

Rolf Blizzard
So I do see it as a C of last resort, but I think it also... Sometimes there are hills you want to die on, and you need to be prepared to engage on that front when that happens. But it needs to be something that is paramount to your existence when you engage on that.

Heather Bayer
Everything you said today, Rolf, has been so valuable, and this is such a valuable contribution to our Regulations Week, because what we're trying to do in this week is just help people to realize that it is coming. It's going to come, and they can be prepared for it, or they can just spend way too much time in the emergency room.

Rolf Blizzard
Yeah. Like I said, it's all about building relationships. And if you want to have a successful relationship, I think these things that I outlined are nothing that is new, nothing that is unique, nothing that is grand. It's just basic common sense.

Heather Bayer
It is, but packaged very neatly. Thank you very much for that. So, yes, thank you Thank you for joining me today, it's been a real pleasure. And I hope we will get to meet at some point at a VRMA conference.

Rolf Blizzard
I will be on the look out for you.

Heather Bayer
Thank you. Thank you so much, Rolf Blizzard, for joining me and talking about this really, really important topic of regulations and advocacy. And I think that was such a great framework for addressing anything that comes up in your area. These seven Cs. We've got conscious commitment, credible communication, coalition, courtship, and then chess, not checkers. I really like that. Then lastly, which is actually an eighth one, is the C of last resort, which is going to court, something you really want to avoid.

Heather Bayer
I learned a lot from that conversation. I think if I'd had that conversation with Rolf a number of years ago, I might have taken a bigger role in advocacy in my area in Ontario. I stepped back. I just didn't feel I had the power, I guess, to go and change what was inevitable. But of course I had, and of course you do. You have that power as well. We all do. I think when Rolf said, You have that vote, and those politicians want your vote, it's really important to them. Just get in touch with them, create those relationships, talk to them. Then when this topic of regulations or legislation comes up, you're going to be in a much better position to begin to make your case.

Heather Bayer
As I mentioned in this discussion, the CanStays Rental Alliance Conference will be going ahead in April, April 20th to 23rd in Banff in Alberta.  I can't wait to go to Banff. There's some great speakers there. I think even if you're not part of the CanStays Rental Alliance, if you're not Canadian, I think the focus of this conference on advocacy and regulations and sustainability and all these serious things, I think this is a great one for anybody to attend, regardless of where you are located, because these not the topics that come up normally in summits and conferences. So you'll get that opportunity to go and join these most important discussions. So come along, I'd love to see you. We really want to get this conference well-attended, and I'd love to meet up with you.

Heather Bayer
So that's it for another week. And as I mentioned before, this is part of Regulations Week. Make sure you check out the blog posts and the posts that we're doing on LinkedIn and across all other social platforms to bring the topic of regulations and advocacy to the forefront. We've got to be thinking about this, folks. As Rolf said, this is coming. It is coming to everybody. So if you're not impacted right now, you will be in the future.

Heather Bayer
Thanks for listening. I will be with you again next week in our final week of SSTIR Crazy Month, when we'll be talking about sustainability. And I'll be speaking talking to Marc Ribail, who is a sustainability advocate, and he has a lot to say on the topic.

Mike Bayer
That was some amazing information, and we hope you'll take the chance to implement some of these ideas in your short-term rental business in 2024. Don't forget to connect and give our thanks to our platinum sponsor for SSTIR Crazy Month, Proper Insurance. Click the link in the description of this episode to connect with the team at Proper for a no obligation chat.

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

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