Heather Bayer
We've got something big to share today. After five months of work and testing, Mike and I are launching a new training system that will raise standards and set a new benchmark for vacation rental companies. Listen in to hear why, how, and what, and where you can find out more.

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. Well, here we are, and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer. And as ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again.

Heather Bayer
And if you watch this on YouTube, you'll see a completely different background. The view from the back of my RV has been replaced with my home office, because now I'm back in Ontario after five months in Gulf Shores.

Heather Bayer
We got home last week after four days driving and three night stops, finally, reversing 38 feet of a fifth wheel back into a snow-free driveway. We usually have to store it for a month when we get back after the winter while we wait for the snow and the ice to clear from the RV pad. But thanks to this weird winter, we could bring it all the way home, and I'm more than thankful for that. And kudos to my husband for reversing the beast down a very soft gravel drive and swinging it around to its final resting space without getting it stuck. It was close, but I I've raked over those bits, so no one will ever know the mild panic and adrenaline rush that took hold as the wheels began to sink in.

Heather Bayer
It was a fabulous five months. I spent time with some awesome vacation rental people, went for coffee, lunches, and office visits, and had the pleasure of delivering a workshop to some of the best in this industry. So a few shoutouts and thank yous before we get into today's meat of the podcast. First of all to Deb Furlong at Beach Getaways for her generosity in allowing Mike and Jason to stay at her condo in Orange Beach, which was completely awesome. And also for arranging for us to use a meeting room to hold the workshop.

Heather Bayer
And Beach Getaways also became my PO Box since USPS don't deliver to the campground, so I became a regular visitor to the office where I always got such a warm welcome. Deb also arranged for a lunch where I got to meet 10 of her team and learned all about their growth and success. And also to Valerie Hawkins of Perdido Realty. I met Valerie for the first time in Orlando, and we've become firm friends. And she welcomed me to her office, introduced me to her team, and I got to see her in-house laundry operation, which was amazing. And I spent time with some of her key people over lunch as well. You'll see lunch was a theme over my five months away.

Heather Bayer
So I also met Brian Harris and Stephanie at Harris Vacations. Finally got to meet Karen Bobe at Sunset Properties. She's been a member of Vacation Rental Formula for many, many years. And I cycled to Gulf Shores to meet up with Eric Thibodeaux from Current Tides to hear about some of his new safety initiatives, which I'll be talking about more in the next couple of months.

Heather Bayer
A huge shout out to Sean Kemper from ETI Solutions, we went to lunch twice with Sean and his wife, Toni, and really value their company and their friendship. Along with doing all that, we packed so much into the winter. And today I'm joined by Mike to talk about the business pivot we've done and to launch our new training system. Without further ado, let's bring Mike in. And so you can hear all about it.

Heather Bayer
I'm super happy to be back home in my home office and have with me today my son, my business partner, Mike Bayer, and we're going to talk about something that is dear to our hearts, and hopefully, will become dear to your hearts in the future. Welcome, Mike.

Mike Bayer
It's really exciting to be back. I've been on the podcast several times, but I'm just bubbling out of my seat with this because this is a big deal. This is a really big deal for us, and it's a really big deal for property management companies in North America, and I can't wait to get into this episode.

Heather Bayer
This is something that's been on the boil, on the simmer for the past four  months now. Can't believe this - maybe five actually, since I first saw that... And we're going to go back into this Mike, how this all started, how what we're going to be announcing today all started. And it really was via a post by Justin Ford on LinkedIn. And you'll probably have heard this because we talked about it a lot in our SSTIR Crazy Month. We talked about the post that Justin wrote that said he'd been going to all these conferences and all these presentations and seminars and workshops on these... What did he call those topics? Fancy topics or the sexy topic? Like marketing and social media. I never thought I'd consider calling dynamic pricing a sexy topic, but it seems to be, because all these rooms were absolutely full to bursting when these topics were being talked about. Yet when they were talking about sustainability or safety or general issues of responsibility in this industry, there was much less in terms of attendance. And that fired us up to start SSTIR Crazy Month. You just chip in, Mike, the launch of SSTIR Crazy Month and how it went a bit more SSTIR Crazy than we expected.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, SSTIR Crazy for us. So hopefully, as listeners to the podcast, you caught some of those episodes through February where each week as a business, we really covered these five key foundational topics, which we felt are so important for property management companies and individuals to harbor as part of their own values, or things to look inwardly on your business and see how well you're dealing with them. The five topics were safety, sustainability, trust, insurance, and regulations. These were the five very simple topics we were all aware of, but quite often, they are not, front and center, and a priority.

Mike Bayer
What we looked at is February, typically in every market across North America and Europe, tends to be a slightly quieter month; obviously in our winter destinations, they're still in the full throws. But it was a great opportunity during the month of February, and we're going to do this again next year, is to focus on those five key topics. What we saw in us as a company was both myself and Heather and our entire team was so energized. With every single post and every single podcast we shared, we saw how much the industry became energized, how many comments and how many shares and how many conversations were started because we were just putting it out there of putting on the stage these five key topics.

Mike Bayer
This really led us to rethink our values. As the Vacation Rental Formula Business School, we've been around and we rebranded to the Vacation Rental Business School last year. We've been Vacation Rental Formula for nearly seven or eight years, and before that, we were Cottage Blogger. But we've always done the same thing. We've always been providing online educational training for everybody in the industry, from the individual who is just thinking about buying their first property, who's scaling, maybe getting several properties, and then maybe managing for others, and then moving into property management. And that's what we've done for nearly 15 years, is providing educational content to that audience. And I think, We've been doing that for quite some time, but always in the mindset of pivoting to focusing on helping property management companies, specifically.

Mike Bayer
Anyway, I'm going to turn this back to Heather now because this sets the stage for what we're going to talk about today is how we are planning on really shaping property management companies 2024 and onwards.

Heather Bayer
I think I've got to add in another quote from somebody else, because it wasn't just the SSTIR Crazy Month that started this off. It was a quote from Travis Wilburn. Travis is the founder of the 100 Collection, which is a group of companies that adhere to a very high set of standards. Each year, the 100 Collection get together, and I think this year was in South Carolina, and they talk about these standards and how they can do better. Travis was standing on the deck of a typical beach house, the ones with the pilings into the ground. We've all seen those. I've just been spent five months down in Gulf Shores and gone along Fort Morgan Road, where every one of these beach houses has these pilings sunk into the ground.

Mike Bayer
I just want to just clarify. A piling goes into the ground, but what it does is it elevates the house. The house is actually elevated by 8 to 10 feet above ground level. Pretty much all you have on the ground level would be maybe some storage, maybe just a covered carport. But the idea is the house is elevated quite high in the possibility of rising water during a storm or a storm surge, which is supposed to protect the property and keep it out of the water. Obviously, these pilings dug deep into the ground, exceptionally deep, they can be 20 feet deep, is what supports that house.

Heather Bayer
Thank you for that. I've been down there for so long, I just could figure that everybody knows what a piling is on a beach house, but of course, not everybody does, so thank you for that. And yes, those are to protect from storm surge or things that happen out in the environment that impacts those houses when those pilings are driven deep into the ground, as Travis said. He used that analogy for our businesses, and he was talking about the foundations of our business and the deeper those foundations go and the more strength there is in them, the more strength there is in the house itself and in the analogy, and therefore the business as well.

Heather Bayer
Mike and I had this discussion about these foundations of the business. We talked about the training we were doing, and we still do. We have courses in owner acquisition and owner onboarding and marketing and niche marketing and all of these types of courses. But we looked around all the property management companies that we knew, and particularly the one that I ran for 20 years, and thought about those foundations and what they were, what a really good company sits on.

Heather Bayer
We came up with trust, and I have to give a lot of kudos here to Chris Maughan of I-PRAC, because he's taught me so much about the issue of trust. We're going to come on to that in a minute. Responsibility. Responsibility being those issues of sustainability, of safety, of making sure you're properly insured, of making sure that data is protected, all of those different aspects, and then hospitality. Hospitality, of course, underpins everything we do. Mike, I've realized in the past year or so, and I think everybody's seen this, that there is so much focus on AI and making everything automated, that these elements of trust, responsibility, hospitality seem to have gone by the wayside. Nobody talks about them, which is of course, why we are bringing these to the forefront and why we feel that these three values are the underpinnings of every successful vacation rental property management company everywhere.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that AI is fantastic... I'm fully on board with AI and our ability to utilize an artificial intelligence to allow us to be better doing what we do. But we must never move away from the fact that as providers to the traveling public, it's that human connection with our guests, that hospitality that we provide, the things that AI can't see and do yet. One day, more than likely in our lifetime, we will probably have robots working for our property management companies. I know that seems very far-fetched, but it's coming and it's coming fast. And yes, they will be trained in trust, hospitality, and responsibility, I hope. But in the meantime, it's not good enough to just have the principals of a property management company aware of these values and what they mean. It's not good enough for just the leadership team of a property management company. It's imperative an entire team fosters these values. Because when you come into work in the morning, if the idea of instilling trust, hospitality, and responsibility, everything you do will lift your  company. It's an old cliché of, A rising tide lifts all boats.

Mike Bayer
But it's super true. It's very true. If you can train your entire team to foster these values, your entire company will rise. At the cost of just making your team better and having them all rowing in the same direction.

Heather Bayer
Really, that's where this all came from. That's where this all came from. Thank you, Justin Ford. Thank you, Travis Wilburn. You guys have...

Mike Bayer
You inspired us.

Heather Bayer
Inspired us, yes. Inspired us and made us realize that there was something big that was missing from this industry in terms of training and education. Because so many companies, they take on new staff, they train them They train them in the systems, they train them in operations, and they will train them in customer service, no doubt. But what seems to be missing is that underpinning, that foundation. Why are we doing this? Why do we have to have the best customer service? Why do we have to show that we are cognizant of safety and sustainability? The reason is that we work on these values of trust, responsibility, and hospitality. So we developed what we are calling the THRIVE Training System.

Heather Bayer
And just stepping back a little bit, something that I'd seen and we were doing was 'once and done' training, which was delivering a training course and once it was done, we expected that our students would go off and put what they'd learned into practice and everything would be better. But I know I've been a trainer for way before I started doing this business. I've always known about continuous learning, and I've always known about how learning has to be continually reinforced, or else it just goes by the wayside.

Heather Bayer
I know that, Mike. I started my Duolingo Spanish almost a year ago, and I got so good at it, and then it just dropped off. Now I've got to start right back at the beginning again because I can't remember what I'd learned. And I think that's probably a good analogy for what I'm trying to say here. Do you agree with that?

Mike Bayer
Yeah, absolutely. Something that was inspirational to me, if any of you don't know, I'm a full-time firefighter as well as being the CEO of Vacation Rental Formula Business School. And one of the things that we had as part of our city was they implemented a lean, L-E-A-N, training system, which I'm sure many of you in the corporate world have heard about. And Lean focuses on the constant assessment of your systems, your products, your services, and trying to make them as efficient as possible, and training your entire team to be aware of inefficiencies. This really got me thinking about, don't have foundational training within property management companies yet. That's what we are hoping to fill with our training system, is to provide foundational training, but then an ongoing tool package and ongoing coaching with property management companies companies that will help to instill these values and this knowledge into the culture of a company.

Mike Bayer
What got us really excited is we actually came up with this idea, and as Heather is always down in Gulf Shores for several months every winter, and through the last few years, she's created some wonderful relationships with several principals of property management companies in the area. And we figured, let's do some training. Let's get back to in-class training. And if you didn't know this, Heather, in a previous life, actually used to own a business training company focusing on management training. If you want to just cover a little bit of that.

Heather Bayer
Yes, this is going back into the 1990s, and I was working at Reader's Digest in the training department as a training officer, and then went off on my own, created a training company, which started with customer service and then moved into management training. And we were offering national vocational qualifications [NVQs] in the UK, which is a vocational qualification system. So I spent a lot of time with people who were training. But once again, NVQs was a system. So yes, I've been doing this for a long time. How did we get around to this, Mike?

Mike Bayer
It was just the fact that our experience with actually creating training programs for property management companies or companies. We're not just shooting from the hip here in thinking, Oh, we've got this great idea. We can just create training for a company. Because, at the end of the day, as Heather just mentioned, we've had courses for years. We'd put them out there, we'd sell them. Here you go, here's your course. But consistently, what we saw was people would purchase a program, but only 20-30% would actually sit down and consume it.

Mike Bayer
We're creating these training programs, I think, obviously not completely altruistically, we're looking to make money from creating educational content, but we were hoping that people would consume it and actually make their businesses better. We weren't seeing that as much with individual property owners or small businesses, and I get it, time is precious when you have a small business. But something that we've learned recently, and as part of working with these property management companies in Gulf Shores, we learned that there are many property management companies who've adopted the EOS business system, The Entrepreneurial Operating System, which was created by Gino Wickman. Actually, I've got the book here. It's called Traction. Really, it's just a blueprint on how to manage a successful business, because as entrepreneurs, we get very carried away and get distracted with the things that we think matter. It tends to be the revenue generation side of things and begin to lose focus of actually managing our companies as they grow. I'm sure if you are a principal of a scaling property management company, you have been in this position where it's just there are so many things to do.

Mike Bayer
We experienced this with our company. When we hire people, we want them to have the values we have. We want them to understand how we feel about training, what we're trying get across to business owners in the vacation rental community. And we can't do that unless we actually provide them with training. We can't expect them to do that if we don't provide training. And again, that's where this idea came from. So let's talk about the workshop.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, let's talk about the workshop. Those relationships that I was creating with some absolutely fantastic property managers down in Gulf Shores led to us having staff and principals from four companies come into a room in a condo building in Orange Beach for a day. And we had a one-day workshop where we introduced these topics of trust, responsibility, and hospitality. I was really taken aback because these are very successful companies. They are solid. Some of them been in the business for 30 years. Yet there were still areas within this day where they were having Aha moments, way more Aha moments than I actually expected to happen. I think we said at the very outset of that workshop, when we counted the people in the room and then we times it up by the number of years that they'd been in the business, we had a collective, I think, of well over 200 years of experience.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, it actually gave us a lot of butterflies, actually, before we got into this room. I was like, Hang on a minute. What can we teach these people? Well, collective, doing any workshop, any in-person training, really, there's always things to learn. But we did find that some of the content that we had created and the points that we were making were, maybe we were just attacking it in a different way, which really opened the minds up of these attendees. The response we got was phenomenal. The response to the concept of full team training on foundational values was amazing as well. We had one company there whose values are so very important to them to the point where every member of the team actually has a booklet that has the values and what it means to the company. But even so, that company was just so.... what we were getting across and how everybody from the newest cleaner, frontline cleaner, to the CEO, if they were all rowing in the same direction and all had these same values, how much better it would make the company for the four key stakeholders. And that's what I want to talk about next.

Heather Bayer
Yes. So let's dive in. So we'd call it the THRIVE Training System. So THRIVE stands for trust, hospitality, responsibility in a vibrant environment. I know when we first came up with this, of course, everybody wants the acronym that we can hang our hats on. I know we went backwards and forwards on the VE. Are we just creating something with 'vibrant environment'? Is it ChatGPT created? I'll give you five letters and you tell me what they should be. But in fact, vibrant environment means a huge amount to every company. We figured that by using the VE as Vibrant Environment, we were adding a huge amount to what we were looking at creating with this system.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, and because our four key stakeholders, I want to talk about that. Our four key stakeholders are our guests, our owners, our community, and our team. Those are the four key stakeholders that are of primary importance to any property management company. We realized with the team, the vibrant environment part is essential to the team. People have to want to come to work. They're going to want to wake up in the morning and not be dragging themselves into work, Oh, not another day doing this. But providing the framework and the culture that allows people to support each other and to enjoy coming to work with the opportunity to move up the ladder.

Mike Bayer
THRIVE is not a business framework. We provide an ongoing mentoring and coaching system to help support the team going forward. So I think the vibrant environment part came from trying to figure out the recognizable acronym, but it is of extreme importance to what we're trying to do.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, what this is all about is creating this memorable experience for guests, for owners, and how that impacts on the community and team members. So we see these stakeholders as all having this symbiotic relationship. We often talk about how the relationship between the company and the community, and we talk about team building and how team building is important for a company. But in the THRIVE system, this is all interconnected, and we talk all the time about how trust, hospitality, and responsibility is so impactful with every single stakeholder, all of those stakeholders. What it means is that with a concrete example, is that when a housekeeper or a cleaner is in a property and they interact with somebody from the community, or they interact with a guest, who may be arriving early, or they have to have interaction with a team member, then at all times, they have this backing of their knowledge of trust, responsibility, and hospitality, and how they can make this impact on those other stakeholders. So I wanted to make that clear. As Mike said, regardless of what role anybody plays within a company, whether it is cleaning and maintenance, whether it is operational staff, whether it is management staff or leadership, everybody is interacting with all these other stakeholders, and they're using these same values that we are training.

Mike Bayer
Yeah. And I think as you go through, we're going to talk about the curriculum now. So what it is we're going to be covering in the curriculum and how that's going to be delivered to a property management company. The ability for everybody to be aware of that. Something that I saw a lot, because I obviously traveled down to the Gulf Coast to be with Heather and to do the workshop. And anytime I travel to a vacation destination like that, I'm always much more aware of the companies in the area. You see the trucks, you see the people, you see the offices, which always tend to be in high-visibility locations. I'm always mentally analyzing and looking at these companies and looking at how they present themselves to the community. Things are simple, I know this sounds ridiculous, but somebody in a branded vehicle, and I saw this in Gulf Shores, I won't name the company, but they were exiting from a condo building and there was an elderly person trying to cross the street, and one of their team members got out and actually helped them cross. Even to the point where the vehicle actually pulled out to shield this person who had some mobility issues.

Mike Bayer
It was just like, Oh, this is just amazing. They're just good people, for starters, but you can't get better marketing than that for your community. So when the issue of regulations comes into a community. If you are already integrating your company into the community by sponsoring charitable events, by getting your team out and doing community cleanups, by raising money for food banks and things like this, providing accommodation for fire victims who don't have a house for a few weeks, things like that. It's a combination of being good people, but good people are placed slightly higher in the community. They're valued more in the community. When these questions of regulations come up, you've already positioned yourselves as indispensable members of your community. This is where the community aspect and how your company integrates with the community and communicates and interacts is so important.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I hadn't I've heard that one, Mike, but you're absolutely right. When you're out and about and you're wearing branded clothing or you've got branding on the car and then doing something like that just adds to the concept of that brand. There was another instance where you received completely the opposite. I don't know whether you want to just mention that one.

Mike Bayer
Maybe I don't remember the negative.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, you were driving back into a condo building.

Mike Bayer
Yes, Yeah, I remember that. This particular interaction with somebody, this was very interesting because I actually mentioned it to... One of the companies was kind enough to provide us with some accommodation while we were staying there. I really, sincerely appreciated that. Anytime we travel anywhere, it's so nice to be able to work with a company and they're willing to help us out with accommodation. Obviously, anytime we do that, we're going to review the system and have a chat with them about anything we can suggest. Now, in this particular example, it just happened to be a busy week and they have a gated system into the condo building, and there was a gate guard there who works for the management company for the building. They don't work for the property management company that we had the unit through. They worked for the building. Just the interaction with that particular gate guard was particularly obnoxious and rude. It was just a bit of a highlight for me, which I brought to the attention of the property management company, because that's the first interaction that somebody has arriving at a property. So not specifically related to THRIVE.

Mike Bayer
Certainly, I think the management company from that building can benefit from THRIVE. They are hosting people in their building.

Heather Bayer
I think I brought it up because they had their company logo on that guy's shirt.

Heather Bayer
Yes, exactly.

Heather Bayer
It just takes one instance, and it doesn't matter whether it's a gate guard, coming back to that, a gate guard or a housekeeper or somebody on the phone in guest services. It just takes one person to create a sourness. We used to call it in CottageLink Rental Management 'pre-souring'. When something happened prior to somebody just walking into the accommodation, but something happened, maybe it was over a phone, maybe it was an email or a text that they took the wrong way, or they'd asked a question, hadn't got a good response, they were pre-soured. You had to really work hard to take that sour taste away. I just wanted to mention that, as you say, it's part of the whole hospitality sector we're talking about. That's THRIVE. It is an emphasis on continuous improvement. We have modules on trust. We have modules on excelling in hospitality, on managing responsibilities, contributing to a vibrant work environment. And all the way through, there is this emphasis on continuous improvement. Let's just talk... I'll turn it over to you, Mike, just to talk about the structure of the training system, because I know you've worked really hard on this. And just to be clear, this is in the early stages.

Mike Bayer
Yes. So we have our four, actually five initial pilot companies who have agreed to sign on with us. We are seeking another 5 to 10 to run with us through the next few months while we get this on our feet. We are actually going to be conducting webinars every week. Actually, our first webinar will be tomorrow. We'll share the link to that at the end of this episode. It's also in the Show Notes. If you're interested in attending a webinar, which I'll be hosting live every week for the next few weeks, to get some more information and to see if THRIVE is a good fit for your property management company.

Mike Bayer
But yeah, to go back to just very quickly, one thing I wanted to mention about the curriculum, we're building a phenomenal advisory board, and we don't have anything signed with anybody yet, so I can't unfortunately name any names. But we do have some really solid people from the industry who are helping to support us and the THRIVE program, as well as other certification courses we're looking at with the Vacation Rental Formula Business School. But something that was brought to our attention is that something that this program is going to be really good for is people who are looking to get hired within the short-term rental space or the vacation rental space who maybe don't have any experience yet.

Mike Bayer
Maybe they're coming from the hotel industry, maybe they're coming from... Maybe they are into property and facilities management, and they're not really aware of what we do. There is still this big misconception out there in the public that vacation rental or short-term rental is just Airbnb. A big part of the course, actually our first module after the introduction, is the history, evolution, and significance of Vacation Rentals. We provide some knowledge as to what happened in the history, where we are now, and where we're going to in the future, to really educate everybody, have everybody on the same page. If you are listening to this and potentially you're looking to move up to maybe a management level in a vacation rental property management company, or if you're seeking to get into the industry, this is also a great course that will be available to individuals as well to prepare you to come into the market. That's why we added this initial module on what is and what is becoming of the vacation rental space.

Heather Bayer
Our goal is for the THRIVE badge to be recognized as something really valuable.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, it goes trust. We want it to be a trust signal. So if any of your employees who complete this program and any company who is willing to sign on at least 85% of their team will be able to display the THRIVE certification badge. What that's going to mean is the trust signal that you've invested in your people. You've invested in your people's knowledge and their values of how they're going to serve those four key stakeholders.

Mike Bayer
We actually feel this badge is not just for marketing for guests to book direct. It's going to be valuable for marketing to hire people within your company, because they're going to know what you stand for. It's going to be valuable to your community to, again, know that you're a business that cares about the community and willing to get involved. For your team members, it just shows your team that you're invested in them. Again, this is where the badge and the certification comes from, which will be issued once the course is complete. Let's talk about how this is going to work because we recognize that some property management companies, you may have large teams. You may have 20-30 people working in offices and administration roles.

Mike Bayer
Even more than that on the operational front as cleaners and maintenance people and frontline service staff. And this training needs to be accessible for everybody. So obviously, the easiest outlet for that is with an online platform. So this is available online. It's available through our learning management system, which is also available on desktop as well as on a mobile app as well. Now, we also recognize that not everybody in a team has access to a computer. They may not even have access to a smartphone. Within the organizational structure, the onboarding structure for a new property management company, we are including the opportunity to teach individuals within your company how to deliver this in person. That way you can take all of our slides and all of the lesson plans and learning outcomes, and we will train a member of your team to be your in-house trainer. If they want to deliver this training in a boardroom to maybe 10 new hires at the same time over the course of a day or two, that's a great way to get this across if not everybody has access to a computer. We also train a member of your team as the implementer.

Mike Bayer
We've got some key terminology that we're using for this. We have our THRIVE Ambassador. The THRIVE Ambassador is somebody within your company, and we provide them.... Obviously, they complete the training themselves, and then we train them in how to help implement this, how to be the point of contact for every member of your team if they have problems or questions regarding the THRIVE content. How does THRIVE apply to your property management company? How is the company implementing these different aspects of THRIVE? How is the company tracking the activities and the things that team members are doing? And how is this being reported? What are the metrics we're using to show that THRIVE is benefiting those four key stakeholders?

Mike Bayer
So your THRIVE ambassador is really the cheerleader for THRIVE in your organization. And the THRIVE champion is the person who's your go-to trainer, who's really good at delivering training with enthusiasm, and we can train them about the content, what's valuable, and how those two people, the ambassador and the champion, can inspire your team to do their job just through a different lens. And that's what we're looking to do, is really focus in everybody in your team so they're looking through the lens of trust, hospitality, and responsibility.

Heather Bayer
That is a great summary of this. We are so excited about this, and I can't wait to get going. And this whole idea of having a THRIVE Ambassador, Mike, you came up with this because I think I had the misgiving that, Okay, we're going to create this great training course, but how do we deliver it? How do we deliver it so that it's not a one and done thing? How do we deliver it so that it is seen as a continuous improvement system? And your concept of the THRIVE Ambassador really has taken this to a next level. So we'll be including workbooks and journals and all sorts of other tools and resources to help that ambassador take it forward from the time that the staff have gone through the initial online training. Because once they've learned something, we want them to be putting this into practice with the stakeholders and recording how they've done this. Because this all comes into how we measure the success of this program, because that's particularly difficult when you're looking at soft skills.

Mike Bayer
Yes, very much. Some of the biggest metrics, we're going to have key performance indicators or KPIs that we'll be looking at as it pertains to all four stakeholders, because that's what this training is to do, is to serve those four segments of your business. Again, just to repeat them, your guest, your owner, your community, and your team. I feel that the most important one out of all four of those is your team. Because if your team is all, again, all rowing in the same direction, and this is totally coined from the EOS training system, they talk about that a lot, is having your team rowing in the same direction, it means that you'll be that much more successful and you will THRIVE that much more quickly as a property management company. Those KPIs, we will work with the THRIVE Ambassadors to measure the activities that are happening in those four quadrants.

Heather Bayer
And if you're out there thinking, Oh, there's only me and I've got one or two other people, so this probably doesn't apply to me. Actually, it really does, because we've created the system to work with the smallest company, all the way through to the largest company because it's a simple standard. It's a standard of training that everybody follows, adheres to. And if you are just two or three people in the company, then that's one of the best places to start, because maybe the first person who does this course becomes the THRIVE ambassador for the next people that you begin to hire. And as your business goes, maybe that ambassadorship moves to somebody else. If you're the principal and you start with it. But it means that you will always have somebody within your company who understands the system, understands the underpinning of trust, responsibility, and hospitality, and how it relates across to all the different stakeholders. So regardless of how big, how small you are, this is designed to work for you.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, and I think the other value of the THRIVE Ambassadors is the fact there is ongoing coaching and training for that position every month. So this is a... We've mentioned it many times, this is an ongoing training system because once your team is initially onboarded and we've implemented the THRIVE system within the company, there's always going to be churn. There's always going to be the ebb and flow of people coming. The company grows typically in the run up to high season. And then there's also the people who just move on because it's their time or they're let go. So there's always retraining that needs to happen. And the great thing with the THRIVE ambassador is that their understanding of the system just gets better with time. The more that they attend coaching calls with us, with other THRIVE ambassadors from other companies, there is a big part of group learning that goes on with this in the ongoing.

Mike Bayer
We are looking in the not too distant future to have conferences for our THRIVE community. That way, they will be able to attend, and we can actually partner up people who are in specific jobs. So the reservations people, they will be in a community other reservations people. There will be your maintenance professionals. You're not going to send every cleaner and groundskeeper to a conference, but certainly your maintenance supervisors. They will be paired up with other maintenance supervisors, because as an industry, we have a lot of the same problems. And quite often, if you are in a community with like-minded people doing the same job, then you are also going to find people who have already had those problems and have found a solution. And quite often are willing to share.

Mike Bayer
Now, we had these big conversations with working with companies in the same tourist destination. It's, Oh, if you get these people together, everybody has property and their way of doing things. But what we love about the THRIVE system, we want this to underpin a large portion of the industry. We feel that this training is not... There's no proprietary information here. It's just about making all companies operate with a little bit more respect for those four stakeholders, a a little bit more attention to detail to those four stakeholders, and also a little bit more enthusiasm and passion when it comes to dealing with your guests, your owners, your community, and other members of your team.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that's great. I think that explains it pretty much as we see it right now. As I said, we're in the not quite the startup phase because we have our five companies on board now that are preparing to start with the training and start with the system. We'll be kicking that off very shortly. But we are looking to... We are looking to grow, and we're looking, as Mike said, to take on some more companies over the summer, because we know there's busyness happens during the summer, and it's not always easy to give people that time that they need to do the core training. But I think once that core training is done, then the rest of the training and learning actually happens on the job.

Mike Bayer
Yeah, absolutely. The thing is with the ongoing coaching and meeting with the THRIVE Ambassadors, you get to share backwards and forwards how some of those, if there's been any implementation challenges, how those have been overcome. Also, what have been the successes? We will have another episode another day where we're going to talk about a very specific item that we're going to be pushing quite hard with this training. It It comes out of Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality. I don't want to mention it just yet because we want to have some documented success stories before we come back. But really, if you haven't had the chance to get Will Godara's book Unreasonable Hospitality, that should be one that should be in your company library. That's a thing you can totally have as a company library that is available to all members of your staff. Why those books? Why you've added that particular book, or learning resource into your library? Because that is one that every member of your team should read. That was actually the book that we gave away at the workshop. We gave that away to every principal of the companies who attended.

Mike Bayer
We've already had some phenomenal feedback as to some of the things that they've implemented that have made a significant impact to guests that they've had and also to members of the community. We've had some just amazing feedback, and we haven't even got started yet.

Heather Bayer
I know. I love that. We haven't even got started yet. I'm going to just pass it over to you, Mike, to wrap up, let anybody who's interested know what they should do next.

Mike Bayer
Yeah. So if you are interested in THRIVE, and this is if you are a principal of your company, if you're just a member of staff of your company and you listen to them, maybe you are an individual property owner who's just interested in the concept of this. Maybe you're looking to scale your business and you want to get started the right way. The best way to find out more information is to attend one of our live webinars we'll be holding each week. The dates and times are slightly different just based on our schedules. But if you head across to vacationrentalformula.com/THRIVE, that's T-H-R-I-V-E. So vacationrentalformula.com/THRIVE. You'll have the list of all the webinars that are available in the coming weeks and an opportunity to become one of our very first companies to sign on. And with that obviously comes some fairly deep discounts as we get going because that's what we need. We need companies on board to help evaluate the system, to give us the feedback, and for us to perfect the system before we get into a much bigger launch towards the end of this year. If you're willing to take that leap with us, and we can certainly give you some referrals to these companies that we're working with already who are already giddy with the prospects of getting their teams on board, we're more than happy to do that.

Mike Bayer
So please attend one of these webinars, vacationrentalformula.com/THRIVE, and I can have the opportunity for 20 to 30 minutes to walk you through the system, exactly what we're looking at for implementation and how that's going to work. And then also we can set up a one-to-one to get some more specifics as to whether or not the THRIVE Training System is a good fit for your vacation rental property management company.

Heather Bayer
So something else you hadn't mentioned, you talked about maybe conferences in the future, but we're also talking about next year, maybe doing longer training, on-site training workshops over a period of three or four days in different areas. I'm really quite excited about that prospect too, to the thought that we could come down to Orange Beach or we could go to the Destin area or the Outer Banks or Gatlinburg, and do these series of workshops and maybe bring some other trainers in. So that's something else that is in the works that you will hear about more as we go through the rest of the year.

Mike Bayer
So we want to hear from you. What do you think about what we're doing? You can leave comments for this Let's go to the Facebook group.....

Heather Bayer
The Business of Short-Term Rental and Property Management.

Mike Bayer
Thank you. If you're not already a member of that group, just head over there, or you can email us directly, highfive@vacationrentalformula.com, or you can go to the website, vacationrentalformula.com, and go across to the 'Contact Us' page, where you can just send us a message, because we want to hear from you about what you think about this concept, how it could be implemented in your business, and how you feel it would benefit your business. Because something that we are hearing more and more from the companies that we are already in conversation with is that there are so much training out there for leadership teams and for the principles of a company, but Very little out there to provide the entire team with some guidance as to what they're doing and why they're doing it. A cleaner is a cleaner until you can give them a mission as to why they're cleaning, why are they doing the things the way they do. When they can share in the magic of creating unreasonable hospitality, when they get to see what it is, the little differences that they make in their job and how that impacts their guests, if the cleaners are there to clean before the owners return to their property, if the cleaners are in the community and interacting with their friends and neighbors, the impact they have there.

Mike Bayer
There is nothing more valuable than your team being recognized for the amazing work that they do and sharing in the success of the business. So we're super excited. We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think and let us know if you're interested because we would love to have a chat with you and your leadership team about whether or not this would be a good fit for you.

Heather Bayer
Okay. Thank you, Mike. It's always a pleasure to have you on here. I think we should do this way more often.

Mike Bayer
Yes. We have so many people lined up for guests, and I love it because we have a phenomenal audience listening to the podcast, and we have a lot of companies who they want to share their knowledge and their viewpoint on the industry. But you're right. I think we will share updates more frequently on THRIVE and how things are going, and especially when we can start sharing the success Our Stories, because, again, it's magic.

Heather Bayer
It is magic. And on that note, I'm going to switch you off. Thanks for coming in today.

Mike Bayer
Thanks. And thanks for listening, everybody.

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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