Mike Bayer
This episode is brought to you by Lodgify. Lodgify is your all-in-one platform for managing and scaling your short-term rental business, from easily publishing your own bookable website to managing all your day-to-day tasks just in one place. Whether you're a seasoned host or starting out, Lodgify can simplify your journey to building your thriving vacation rental business. And with Lodgify, you can accept direct bookings and payments, sync your reservations across all major booking sites, and automate your workflows, helping you save time while increasing your revenue. It's the smart way to grow your business. Keep your guests satisfied and enjoy what you do.

Mike Bayer
So get started today and make sure you use the code VRF10, that's VRF10, for 10% off your professional and ultimate yearly plans When signing up.

Heather Bayer
"Going 10X means recognizing that what got you here won't get you to your next there." This is a quote from Dan Miller, the co-author of 10X is Easier than 2X. In this episode, I've applied the learnings from the book to our short-term rental business and want to give you a lot of practical examples to help you make the leap from 2X to 10X.

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

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and as ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again with this solo episode. The reason I'm doing a solo episode is that because I've been reading a book that's had a huge impact on me and made me look back over many, many years of my career and figure out what I was doing and if I was following the concepts from this book without really knowing it. So let's kick off.

Heather Bayer
In the early 1990s, I was working at Reader's Digest as a customer service trainer. I also had a part-time psychotherapy and hypnotherapy business, and I taught Psychology 101 at the local Adult Education Center in their night school. It was really clear I had absolutely no idea of my career direction. So I could have made a 2X decision, and you're going to hear a bit more about what 2X and 10X actually means.

Heather Bayer
But I could have made a 2X decision and just chosen one one of those to concentrate on. Instead, I took what I now know to be a 10X leap. I quit the day job, I closed the counseling practice, I took my evenings back, and I founded a management training business called Leading Minds. I really loved that title. I had the domain name, leadingminds.co.uk. I never kept it up after I sold that business, I never kept Leading Minds. And sadly, it's now gone. But anyway, it was just a really good domain name that I let go. Anyhow, that's by the by. So Leading Minds focused on customer service training, marketing, and communication in the healthcare sector, which is very different from what I'm doing now.

Heather Bayer
And then in the early 2000s, I took another 10X jump when I realized there were huge opportunities in the cottage rental market in Ontario, and I emigrated to start a new business. So most of us have done this at some time or another during our lives. But like me, you've probably not categorized it this way. And there's a lot of people in our industry who've got into the businesses they're now in because of a 10X move.

Heather Bayer
I look at people like Justin Ford, who went from running a property management company in Maine to spearheading the movement towards more safety in rentals. Steve Trover also had a successful vacation rental business, and he then went on to launch Better Talent, which makes it easier for any company that wants to hire new staff. And then there's Vanessa de Souza Lage, whose company, Sustonica, is paving the way to more sustainability in our business. When she left Rentals United, which was the company she co-founded, she could have stayed in the channel management space, but she chose instead to make a big change, a 10X leap. And there's lots more. But don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating you jump off a cliff and hope the parachute will open, which is what I did when we emigrated to Canada, as I really had no proof of concept. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later on. But I did what my gut told me anyway. So I'm just encouraging you in this episode to look at everything you do in a different way. In "10X is Easier than 2X", which is the title of the book, Dan Sullivan and his co-author, Benjamin Hardy argue that aiming for 10X growth is easier than aiming for 2X growth due to a number of key reasons.

Heather Bayer
Before I get into those reasons, I'm going to give you a quick overview of what it means to actually 10X your business. 10x growth refers to achieving a tenfold increase in a particular aspect of your business, maybe revenue or your guest base or market share rather than just doubling it. It's a big concept. It involves thinking big. It involves aiming for exponential rather than incremental improvements. It took me a while to really understand what that meant. And I think by the end of this episode, you'll understand it, too, if you don't already. It involves transforming how you operate to reach a much higher level of performance. So here's a breakdown of what that entails.

Heather Bayer
Firstly, exponential thinking. That means your vision. Instead of setting goals to achieve just little or modest improvements, you envision a future where your business is 10X larger or more successful. You embrace radical innovation rather than just making incremental changes. So that might involve adopting new technologies, exploring entirely new markets, or even redefining your business model. Then secondly, there's scalability. You develop scalable systems and processes that that can handle 10X the current volume of what you're doing without a proportional increase in costs or even in complexity. And automation. You implement automation and advanced technologies to streamline operations and increase efficiency. Now, you may look back and think of a new technology that you brought in that has done some of these things. But when you 10X your entire strategy encompasses all of these things in a very structured way rather than taking those incremental approaches.

Heather Bayer
Thirdly is your focus and simplification of what you do. So you focus on your core strengths and just eliminate activities that don't contribute significantly to your growth. We all do things that maybe we enjoy, maybe we don't, but they've just been there forever. But they're not contributing to growth. So this might be narrowing your product or service offerings and replacing them with others of a much higher potential. And then you simplify your operations to reduce any friction and enhance your ability to allow your business to scale more effectively. And then, and we'll be talking about this in more depth as we go on, is leveraging partnerships and resources, forming strategic partnerships that get you into new markets or technologies or customer bases, which just multiplies your potential for growth.

Heather Bayer
Then finally, taking a customer-centric approach. We do take our guest-centric approach. But this is more on really focusing in on delivering exceptional customer experiences that drive the loyalty and word of mouth referrals and using data and analytics to understand all this, to understand customer behavior, their preferences, their trends, and to help you to create more targeted and much more effective growth strategies. So of course, there's challenges to this type of 10X growth. You've got resource constraints. If you grow too quickly, you're going to need more resources. You might need capital. You might need more people. You might need to invest in more technology. Then there's the operational complexity of managing a much larger business. So you have to have really robust systems and processes in place to manage that. And then maintaining high quality and customer satisfaction while you're scaling like this can be really challenging. So in the book, Sullivan and Hardy talk about some strategies for achieving 10X growth. And these quickly are, innovate boldly, you invest in research and development. Leverage technology, none of us really have difficulty in leveraging technology, there's a lot out there that helps us in our business. Expand aggressively, enter new markets, perhaps, multiplying your potential customer base, building a strong brand that resonates with customers and sets you apart from your competitors, and that focus on scalability.

Heather Bayer
So that, in a nutshell, is what this book is about, and I'm going to take the next 30 minutes or so to go through some of the reasons why 10X is better or is easier than 2X, and bring you some examples of how companies in our industry have 10X'ed and how they are really making a difference because they have taken that leap.

Heather Bayer
So the first reason that 10X is easier than 2X is that when you aim for 10X growth, it forces a complete mindset shift. When you aim for 2X growth, you tend to focus on these incremental improvements I mentioned before and just making existing processes slightly better. In contrast, aiming for 10X requires really big thinking and innovation. It really pushes you to rethink and overhaul your entire approach. I've talked over the last few months with a lot of people who've been to Matt Landau and Steve Schwab's Key Retreats. I didn't realize that there were dozens of them taking place over the last couple of years. And a lot of people went to these retreats. And people I talked to all came away with this mindset shift and did something that had been in their mind for a long time, but they hadn't seen their way clear to being able to do it.

Heather Bayer
They came away and took 10X leaps after that retreat. I talked to Matt last week about retreats, and I will come back to that a bit later on, just to remind you to go and sign up for Here Goes Nothin', which is Matt's new venture. I have, and I'm going to be reaping the benefits very soon. So, yes, all those people who did those retreats took this, maybe you call it a leap of faith. Maybe you call it a 10X leap; I don't know. You determine what you want to call it, but they made massive changes. They made a mindset shift. And just to give you another example from my business, we've been creating online training courses for years, making small changes here and there, improving some delivery processes, which I now see that it was a standard 2X way of approaching things, just making incremental changes. But in the last six months, we've completely overhauled our business and created the THRIVE system of training. And in doing that, we had to really shift our mindset. It's taken us places we'd never imagined, and this is just the start.

Heather Bayer
This mindset shift should have you looking back and thinking once you've done it, did we really use to do it like that? That's when you know you've made a real mindset shift. Consider this way of thinking. Let's say you're a property management company and you say, We'd like to take on a few more luxury properties. That's 2X thinking. Or in the future, we will only accept properties that meet these much higher standards, and we will offer all our guests a full concierge service. That's one example. Or, The pet-friendly market is huge, so we'll encourage new owners to accept pets and create a pet-friendly area on the website - 2x thinking. Or like Sue Allen did at East Ruston Cottages, we will only market pet-friendly properties. We'll have places that welcome multiple dogs and be seen as the Premier Pets Welcome Company in the country. East Ruston Cottages don't have any properties that are pet free. They are only a pet-friendly business; that was a 10X change. If you're doing that thinking, you'd probably say, Our website will focus entirely on attracting pet owners and their furry friends, will have pages of information on where guests can take their pets, where they can find the best dog walks and dog parks, and where they can have raw food delivered.

Heather Bayer
Now, that really is 10X thinking, but it's something that Sue does on her website, because a large proportion of dog owners now feed their dogs raw food; it's really tough to find suppliers. So on her website, she has a local supplier that will deliver raw pet food to each of their properties. Sue took her mindset shift away from being just, Oh, I'll be pet-friendly. I'll have some really pet welcoming properties, to this true Pets Welcome business that's made her, as I say, the premier pets welcome company in the UK.

Heather Bayer
So that was mindset shift. The second reason that 10Xing is easy is because you're forced to to simplify. To achieve 10X growth, you have to simplify and focus on what truly matters, because if you're focusing on a gazillion smaller things, you're not concentrating on, or you're not focusing on, these few things that truly make a difference. So this often means eliminating activities and processes and commitments that don't contribute significantly to your goal. And by doing this, you streamline your efforts and you focus on the most impactful actions. You know, once you start doing this, it's amazing how your mind clears because it's not cluttered by all of these smaller, less significant actions that have been populating your day-to-day for so long. So you simplify them, you eliminate them, or you delegate them. Because as managers, we so often chase multiple goals and we build way too much complexity into our operations. For example, you might have created a laundry list of services such as airport pickups, maybe grocery delivery services or equipment rentals. Yet there's very few people who've actually taken advantage of the services, and in general, they're underused. So discontinue those services and invest instead in maybe unique property features such as smart home technologies or accessibility.

Heather Bayer
It all goes back to that mind shift. When you do that, you just have to simplify and eliminate the peripheral stuff that doesn't contribute to the whole. In the same way as we did with Vacation Rental Formula Business School, we had to eliminate a number of the little things we were doing. I had a little podcast called The Tipping Point, which was interesting. It was a little 10-minute show which had 10 tips that would make your business better. I really enjoyed doing that. We had a lot of guests come on and give their 10 tips, but it wasn't making the huge impact I thought it would. We were doing some small courses which were not, once again, making the impact that I'd expected or wanted them to do.

Heather Bayer
So when we made our mind shift, when we took our mind shift and started the THRIVE Training System, everything else seemed to fall away. And we realized that we had found the thing. And that's what mind shift does. So the third reason is leveraging. Achieving 10X growth means leveraging resources and talents in and opportunities in ways that 2X growth just doesn't do. It could mean leveraging technology. It could mean delegating tasks more effectively, or forming strategic partnerships that multiply your efforts.

Heather Bayer
Last September, Mike and I visited Kerry Gibson and Philippe Pichet, the owners of Chalets Hygge, in the Eastern Townships of Québec. And I've interviewed Kerry a couple of times. She's such a dynamic person. She's a great friend, and she has taught me a lot about leveraging. Kerry has leveraged her connections with the local tourism department to the point that they now approach her when they have an influencer or they've got some media looking for a story. While Mike and I were there, they had a visit from their local tourism organization, and we were able to see at first-hand how beneficial this relationship was as the discussion explored all these different ways to collaborate.

Heather Bayer
As an example, a national media outlet had been looking for a place to accommodate a journalist who was writing a piece on the area, and they approached Québec tourism, who in turn put them in touch with the local Eastern Townships' Department. Then through the connections they'd made, the journalist and his family then stayed in one of Kerry and Philippe's chalets for a week, and the resulting article was syndicated right the way across all the Canadian media outlets. It was massively successful for the Chalets Hygge brand. Even though they'd sacrificed a high season week for this journalist and their family to stay, the result was 10X what they would have made from just renting that week.

Heather Bayer
So a 2X effort might be to tag local tourism providers on Instagram, and I know a lot of people do that. But a 10X goal would be to do what Kerry has done and create strong and enduring relationships with local departments like that tourism department. Tyann Marcink-Hammond does this as well with Branson family retreats. She talks a lot about leveraging her connections with the local chamber of commerce and tourism department. So when people pop into the chamber of commerce in Branson and begin talking to the people behind the desk, and maybe they're asking for information on places to stay the next time they come, the people behind the desk are going to mention Tyann and Branson Family Retreats because Tyann has made her mark.

Heather Bayer
She has leveraged the connection she has with the chamber to ensure that her brand is front and center and front of mind. So that's leveraging. It can be done in a whole bunch of different ways. I am encouraging you to go and read the book, "10X is Easier than 2X", because it's just full of so much stuff that I can't include in this episode. So you can go and find out more ways of leveraging through that.

Heather Bayer
So the next reason is the one that really got me on the 10X bandwagon, and that is inspiration and motivation. A 10X goal is just way more inspiring and motivating. It ignites passion and creativity. As when you're chasing a huge goal, it's so much more exciting and fulfilling than aiming for a modest improvement.

Heather Bayer
And I want to go back and give you another one of my examples, because back in the late 1990s, I built a small holiday company in the UK, and we were marketing Ontario Waterfront Vacations; I'd become a travel agent. Still pursuing that career direction I mentioned earlier, it was a great side hustle, and I was able to travel back and forth to Canada really frequently, I was going... every six weeks or so. I'd go and source new properties to add to the portfolio, and it was great fun. But it was just that, it was a side hustle, almost a hobby, because I was still managing the training company at the same time. Then on one visit out there, it was a very memorable visit, I met up with Craig White, who would ultimately become my partner in CottageLink Rental Management, which was my property management company that Craig and I ran for 20 years before we sold it in 2022. But Craig had created a listing site called CottageLink back in 1995. It was doing very well. It was one of the very early listing sites. But he was being approached by owners who didn't want to just list their property and do it all themselves. They didn't want to do the marketing and rental management. They're asking Craig if he could do that. And Craig was sending them away to other cottage rental companies in the area. He still had a day job. He didn't want the hassle of getting into property management. That was my light bulb moment and the 10X leap of emigrating.

Heather Bayer
I mean, maybe we should call that 100X, actually, because that's taking you out of one country and depositing you into another and starting all over again. But anyway, I'll call it my 10X leap of immigration that came into being. I was inspired and motivated to achieve something so much bigger than I was doing with Clearwater Holidays, where we had about 25 properties that we had managed to source. We weren't managing them. We were simply marketing them to the British public, and it was going very nicely. But I saw the 10X moment, and we went with it. 2X goals can also be motivating and inspiring, but they tend to be much shorter term, while a 10X goal can just catapult you into the next decade of growth.

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

Heather Bayer
It's great to welcome back Dennis Klett from Lodgify once again. And today, he's going to tell you how you can set up a property on Lodgify. Over to you, Dennis.

Dennis Klett
Yeah, it's super easy to create a rental on Lodgify. Either if you're ready on an Airbnb, you can just import it with a click of a button. We retrieve all the data from Airbnb directly to Lodgify to set up your rental. If you don't have that yet, you can just create a rental from scratch using our step-by-step guided process, which is very similar to creating a listing on any other booking platform. Once you have done that, we automatically generate a website for you. So you have an up and running website right after you created those listings, and you can customize your website and then proceed to publishing it. The last thing you need is to select a payment gateway, which is very easy to sign up with companies like Stripe or PayPal that you can easily connect to Lodgify. And the last step would be to get you connected to your booking platforms. And there we have a free onboarding service where one of our customer agents will handhold you to get you connected and ensure that everything is up and running and meets your expectations.

Heather Bayer
That sounds super easy, Dennis. Thank you so much for that.

Heather Bayer
So I want to give you a fictional example of a company that took an inspirational approach to its brand strategy. So this company had a 2X approach to their business, which was fine. They were doing okay. Their marketing efforts were pretty much standard, and they focused on the features of the properties, such as the amenities and the location, all of which were absolutely lovely. So they had good guest communication, although it was pretty much limited to transactional interactions, so booking confirmation, check-in instructions, and daily operations, conducted in a pretty much routine manner. And they didn't have a huge emphasis on long-term vision or innovation. And then the leadership, maybe they read the book, decided to take a 10X approach. So they started out by developing a really compelling vision and mission statement for the company that reflected their values and how they wanted the business to be seen. So the vision was to create unforgettable travel experiences that connected guests with the heart and soul of each destination. With that in mind, they wrote the story that highlighted their passion and their inspiration and the journey that led to starting the business. They had traveled widely and they loved experiencing authentic local culture and wanted their guests to have that same experience.

Heather Bayer
Their story reflected that desire for delivering something really special that would create long-lasting memories. They then wove that narrative throughout their new website. The second stage was to design really unique and personalized guest experiences that aligned with their brand story. They offered cooking classes with local chefs, guided kayak trips, and birdwatching outings with a local naturalist. And all their communication with their guests became motivational. They were sharing inspirational quotes, travel stories, and tips for making the most of their stay. Nothing was done by rote, it was all very motivational, inspirational, and personalized. But it didn't stop there. They communicated the message and their vision to their employees and encouraged their teams to come up with innovative ideas for improving guest experiences. And this didn't stop just at the front desk staff. This was everybody in the business, from the cleaning and maintenance teams all the way up to the leadership. They were all offered incentives and recognition for contributing suggestions and helping to implement new initiatives, and the whole company got involved. Finally, they built a community around the brand by engaging with their guests through social media and blogs and having events in the local community where guests could come and enjoy a barbecue and chats with locals who came along as well.

Heather Bayer
I mentioned earlier, the local naturalist who came to to talk about birds, the person who did the kayaking trips, the local providers came along to these events, so their guests could meet them. Guests were also encouraged to share their own stories through video and audio, and these were then posted on their social media channels and website. So this company took a massive 10X leap from being incremental to being inspirational, motivational, and innovative.

Heather Bayer
So there's a lot of benefits of taking this inspirational approach. The first one, enhanced guest connection, because by sharing your authentic brand story, and I talk a lot about this, about having your unique About Us page, which is what your brand story actually is. So by sharing that and providing unique experiences, you create a deeper emotional connection connection with your guests, and it does make their stays more memorable. They're not just remembering checking-in, having a nice time, checking-out. They are reminded at all times of the different things that happened during their stay that made it really, really memorable.

Heather Bayer
I remember, I've mentioned this one before, going to the island of Eleuthera many years ago, and it was one of the first times that I experienced real hospitality from an owner via a very simple gesture. I had mentioned in an email about where could I find local fish? I wanted to be able to go buy local fish and cook it in the property. When I got there, there was a handwritten note and a small recipe book for cooking local fish dishes. I couldn't have been more astounded, excited, totally taken aback by that gesture. That's what this is all about. I've never forgot that. That trip to a Eleuthera was over 12 years ago. I still remember that. I still remember cooking that fish dish and using one of those recipes. And that has really stuck in my mind. So that is what this is all about, by taking that inspirational approach.

Heather Bayer
Another benefit is the increased loyalty. You motivated and inspired guests are more likely to return, they'll refer friends and family, which just drives repeat business. I've mentioned this place I went to in Eleuthera dozens of times. I've shared it with people. I know that a couple of people that I've shared it with have taken vacations in Eleuthera based on the things I shared with them about my stay.

Heather Bayer
Third benefit is team engagement and retention. If you have a clear vision and a mission, it inspires and motivates your team. It leads to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. Recently, we've been working with some property management companies in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach [Alabama] and just over into Florida. We've been working with Perdido Realty and Beach Getaways and Harris Vacations. All of these companies have a clear vision. They all inspire and motivate their teams. It's paying dividends for them. And that inspirational approach also gives a benefit of brand differentiation. It sets your business apart from the competitors. It attracts more bookings, and consequently, it's going foster your long-term growth.

Heather Bayer
So back to our reasons for 10X being easier than 2X. Number five in our list is that it leads to transformative thinking. To achieve 10X growth, you've got to engage in this type of thinking. It involves looking at your business or life from a completely different perspective. It has you questioning your fundamental assumptions and has you looking at new possibilities that you might not consider when you aim for only 2X growth.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to come back now to what I was talking about with Matt Landau last week about retreats, when you take time out from your day-to-day operations of your business and you go away with maybe a group of your own people, but even better is to go away with people from not just in your own business, but from other walks of life. And you go and talk about where you are now and where you want to be. And that's what fosters this transformative thinking. You're given those opportunities to look at your business from a completely different perspective and to help you explore all the new things that you could possibly do. Those are five strong reasons why 10X can be easier than 2X when you're looking at the development and growth of your business. So I want to give you some examples as well of 2X versus 10X career growth. Because not all of you listening to this may be in that position to make a 10X leap within your own company. But you can take a 10X jump in your career growth.

Heather Bayer
Here's one example. Here's a 2X change for your personal development. You could attend a few professional development courses to improve your current skillset and aim for promotion in your current role within the next year. A 10X change would be to identify a completely new role or another role within your company that aligns with your passions and strengths. And in doing so, you'd invest in acquiring some new skills through doing an intensive training program or undertaking a degree, networking aggressively within your industry, finding other people who are doing that role that you would like to take on, and aim to emulate what they're doing. Give yourself a 10X goal to take a leadership role within the next three years, and then you work towards that. I'm always taken with the story of Mary T Barra, who who is the Chairman and CEO of General Motors. Mary started her life with General Motors on the production line, on the automotive production line. She had 10X goals, and she met those 10X goals. You've probably heard a lot of these stories of people who started at the bottom of their industry and ended up right at the top. Seek them out. Have a look. Google people who've made those 10X leaps and have not spent their entire career on 2X incremental change.

Heather Bayer
Here's another one on personal development. 2x would be, and we often see this, read a few more books each year and attend some occasional personal development workshops to gradually improve your knowledge and skills. A lot of us do this. The 10X change would be to immerse yourself in a comprehensive personal development program with a high-level coach or mentor, attend transformative seminars or retreats, and make a commitment to daily habits that radically enhance your mindset and your overall life satisfaction. We all too often just go through our lives incrementally, making little changes here and there. But there is a vast difference when you make that 10X leap.

Heather Bayer
Okay, finally, I want to give you some ways of shifting your focus from making those incremental improvements to making exponential growth. So I wanted to give you five steps that's going to help you move from that 2X mindset to a 10X mindset. And the first step is to re-evaluate your vision. Really take some time to think about where you're going, where you want to be. So here's an example, and this is a business example. A 2X goal would be to increase revenue by 20% this year. A 10X shift would be, imagine what your business would look like if you aim to increase revenue by 200%. Visualize that. Visualize what that would look like. Re-evaluate your incremental vision and make it exponential. It is a big shift. But this is where you think back to big, awesome goals you've met before. Things that you've done in the past that you've never really evaluated as being 10X. I'd never evaluated some of the things I did as being 10X until I read this book.

Heather Bayer
The second one, the second step is to identify your unique strengths. So in a business, a 2X goal could be to improve your customer service by hiring one more staff member. You're going to be able to answer the phone quicker and business is going to get better because of it. Well, maybe. The 10X shift will be focusing exclusively on what you and the team are exceptionally good at. Invest in advanced training for your staff. Look at becoming industry leaders in customer service. Robin and Heather Cragan at Moving Mountains are leading the field in excellence and customer service and the guest experience. They took a 10X shift by embracing Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality. Robin tells a story of being at the Omni Hotel for the DARM Conference in December of last year, December of 2023. He and Heather were working in the business while they were at the conference, like we all do.

Heather Bayer
When they were back in their hotel room, they wanted to sit down and do a little bit of work. Now, there was one desk, one chair. Robin called down to the front desk and said, Could they send up another chair so that he could sit and do a little bit of work as well? They said, No, they couldn't do that. Can you imagine? They could not send up another chair. So Robin posted on his social media his set up of the coffee table, and he'd set up an ironing board. I think he was sitting on the coffee table and the ironing board was set up with his laptop or vice versa. He might have been sitting on the ironing board. I'm not quite sure, but anyway, it was a funny picture. This was picked up by the hotel management, and he got a call from the day manager who said, I'm so sorry this happened. It should not have occurred. We really want to make it up to you and we'd like to offer you a free night in our hotel. Well by that time, they'd gone home. They had no intention of returning to Nashville or needing another hotel room at the Omni. It was pretty much a useless gesture. I can't remember the full story. I'm going to have to dig that out.

Heather Bayer
But somehow, the hotel manager or somebody much higher up in the organization saw what had happened, saw that Robin was posting about this. Out of the blue, a big package arrived at Robin's home in Colorado, and it was a beautiful new office chair. I'm not saying that's 'unreasonable hospitality', that's 'unreasonable recovery'. It's a good recovery from a situation.

Heather Bayer
But I mention all this because at the DARM Conference, Will Guidara, the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, gave a great presentation. Robin and Heather have taken this up big time, and they have embraced the customer service ideals and concepts that Guidara was talking about, and they've taken that 10X shift in customer service.

Heather Bayer
So the third step is to scale up your marketing. So a 2X goal would be to increase your social media ad budget, whereas a 10X shift would be to launch a multi-channel marketing campaign that included influencer partnerships, content creation, and global advertising strategies. So it's creating a big strategy rather than a simple incremental change.

Heather Bayer
The fourth step could be creating transformative guest experiences. The 2X goal, offer a complementary welcome basket to guests, whereas a 10X shift would be to curate unique guest experiences, personalized travel itineraries, exclusive local tours that nobody else gets to take, or in-property luxury services like private chefs or wellness treatments or yoga, personalized yoga classes.

Heather Bayer
And then the fifth step is commit to continuous learning and innovation. A 2X goal, it's what we all do, attend an annual industry conference. But a 10X shift would be to establish a culture of continuous learning and innovation within your company. This is what we are doing with THRIVE. We are creating or helping businesses to create this culture of continuous learning and innovation. We are encouraging businesses to take that 10X leap. Encourage your team to attend conferences, to participate in webinars, and to stay updated with the latest industry trends and technologies. This is one area where you can really make a difference, where you can make that 10X shift by investing in your team and your staff.

Heather Bayer
So there we are. By shedding your 2X incremental goals and embracing a 10X mindset, you can unlock new opportunities for growth. I think I've included enough examples to show you that this is not difficult. It just requires a different way of thinking. So I am putting a link to '10X is Easier than 2X in the Show Notes. I really encourage you to read it, listen to it, act on it, and let me know what your 10X shifts are. I'd love to hear about them. As I said at the beginning of this, I had not categorized the things that I was doing in my life and my career as 10X shifts. Now I see them as what they really are. In doing that, it's enabled me to take them apart and see how I was operating on a lot of these principles without actually knowing that they were principles. But now that I have unraveled this and seen that it is a process, it's altered my thinking in an entirely new way. I hope it does yours.

Heather Bayer
I hope you've enjoyed this. I plan on bringing some more of these solo episodes where I take a book that I've been reading and take it apart and share the learnings with you. As I say, let me know if you've made any 10X Leaps that you'd like to share. I'd love to add that to some of the blog posts I'm writing on this. And as always, I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with me, heather@vacationrentalformula.com. I will be putting a link in the Show Notes to Here Goes Nothin', which is Matt Landau's new venture. Talking about retreats, I have been saying, I never got to one of the Key Retreats. I am so excited that there will be some more retreats coming up that I will get to go to, and I'll bring you the outcome of those when I get back. I might even be more motivated and inspired by then.

Heather Bayer
If you've enjoyed this and you enjoy our podcast, I'd love it if you'd leave me a great review. It helps other listeners to find the podcast and to appreciate that it's something worth listening to. As ever, thank you for joining me on this episode, and I hope I will have you with me again next week.

Mike Bayer
This episode was brought to you by Lodgify, an all-in-one solution that will help you start, manage, and grow your short-term rental business. Use code VRF10 and get started today at Lodgify.com.

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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