‍Heather Bayer: [00:00:00] I am super excited to have back with me again once again the Ever Traveling Justin Ford. Justin, it's an absolute pleasure to catch you between trips. I know you had some issues coming back from Nashville. Can't wait to hear your airport stories and you are heading off to Scotland.

So thank you very much for coming along and sitting down with me for an hour on a Sunday afternoon.

Justin Ford: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I can talk safety forever and ever and ever and ever talk. I talk the industry. I love this industry.

Heather Bayer: I know. And this is why I'm still here three years after selling a business. Can't get away from it. Tell me about the airport scenario because that made me laugh so much.

Justin Ford: I think that a lot of operators are dealing with this too. This has gotta be one of the worst summers of travel that we've seen in quite a long time. The thunderstorms that just keep rolling across the us up where I'm based out of, in the Northeast, we haven't seen a lot of those, but on the other hand, the big hubs, [00:01:00] Atlanta Charlotte, Nashville even, out in the west in the wildfire.

So it's been really hard. To move about and predict moving about, and I got wrapped up in that myself between mechanical issues with airplanes and storms in Boston. It took me over 24 hours for what should have been a routine two and a half hour flight from Nashville to, to home to Maine to finally get home.

It was planes, trains, and automobiles.

Heather Bayer: Oh it all adds to the fabric of life, doesn't it? And . You are off again tomorrow.

Justin Ford: I'm off again tomorrow I'm hoping international goes a little bit better although I'm flying into the same airport that our president is at right now and there's a lot of protests going on, so we'll see what happens.

Heather Bayer: I was going to ask you if you are heading to Turnberry.

Justin Ford: Yeah not heading to Turnberry, but he's in Edinburgh and so we'll see what happens.

Heather Bayer: Yeah. We just had our prime Minister and all the premiers meeting in our little town of Huntsville last week. And yeah, you didn't want to be [00:02:00] out on the roads at all during that time. It's a quiet little town in the winter. Crazy busy in the summer and just made a little bit more busy with a lot of protestors.

Although I don't know why anybody's protesting our government right now.

Justin Ford: Yeah. It's summer. Go to the beach, go fishing. We can protest in the fall. I dunno. It's been a hot summer.

Heather Bayer: Yeah, absolutely. Hot summer, and that's what we're gonna talk about because we're mid-summer-ish and it just struck me the other day and I was thinking, three years ago I was still in the business. We'd sold it, we closed on May the 31st, and I still had, it was meant to be three months of staying in the business.

And I managed halfway through the summer when I said, I think you guys can go it alone now. But it just made me think. About the mid-summer time when people are going nuts. You've got guests with vacation brains, you've got cleaners that are burning out and things get forgotten.

Safety does seem to be one of the things that [00:03:00] just gets pushed aside when everything is going nuts in the summer. But, so here we are midsummer. Do you feel that the message around safety that you are taking wherever you go, regardless of the season, is resonating more broadly across the industry?

Or are we just still preaching to the converted?

Justin Ford: I would say, I would argue that we're at record enrollments right now for the Breezeway Safety Course. Which has just been absolutely incredible and we're getting ready to take it actually to the next level. We're doing a lot of work in the background right now that's gonna make that course even more accessible and more part of our breezeway community this fall.

So that's been a lot of fun and a lot of the leaders. Are really stepping up and they're big leaders. Steve Schwab with Casago/Vacasa, he's invited me to be one of the keynote speakers at Casa Con this fall. And he's got some big [00:04:00] surprises related to safety. They've put Jackie on their team in charge of safety down there.

We've been doing a lot of webinars with 'em. So when you've got the biggest. Operator in the industry right now that's putting safety at the forefront that's spreading out. Another fun one is I just actually took a boat ride. He was visiting me in Maine, and he and I connected together, Jamie Lane from AirDNA. We had a lot of fun digging into some data, Heather. Data that a lot of people, a lot of your listeners might not know that's out there, but AirDNA can actually scrub and look at guest reviews, which everybody knew, but did you know that they can highlight guest complaints about safety?

We actually know by ranking guest complaints about safety issues, who the worst operators are in the industry, and that's not a list people want to see published.

Heather Bayer: I can imagine that. Yes. And I know that, almost everybody now can scrape reviews and tell AI to pull out [00:05:00] keywords that are appearing in reviews. So I would imagine that AirDNA is right on top of that and can do that. But that would be interesting. I'm reaching out to Jamie, in fact, this week. Every time I see him at a conference, I say, you've got to come on the podcast. He has never been on this podcast. 

Justin Ford: Maybe he'll tell. I'm not bold and brave enough to tell you who's on that list, but wow, there’s some familiar names. It's not good..

Heather Bayer: This is where people need to be, they know. They know that they're on that list. I'm quite sure, because they're seeing this in…, if they read their reviews, of course,

Justin Ford: hopefully, they're reading their reviews and, and that's what makes you wonder, are they doing that? I ran into Nick Massey recently from Proper Insurance. He was actually at the STR Wealth Conference with me. The number of claims that they're getting in this summer for safety related incidents.

There's a lot of them. I'm not necessarily echoing them right now, but we've had a lot of pool drownings, which is not good. There's been a lot of fires, a lot of different incidents, nothing has [00:06:00] stopped when it comes to safety this summer. Incidents are still happening, but going back, circling back there's definitely been an increase in the number of people that are starting to say, you know what, we’ve got to put this out in front.

Heather Bayer: Yeah. Oh I'm glad of that. When you said to me, there's a lot of leaders out there doing this, and I thought, yes, you start talking about the people that are really getting out there and putting safety first. Maybe that will jog some of the others to realize that this has got to be out front.

Justin Ford: Yes, it has to be. And there's just some people that everyone admires in this industry that put safety first. Nir Maimon with the Maimon Group, Robin Craigen, with Moving Mountains. I'm going back out there every September. They bring me in for safety training with their team. It's safety month. Imagine that, one of the top operators in our industry continues to do a safety month at their company, at all their offices, all their markets, all their new employees, every single year. That's how [00:07:00] important that is. And Nick from OSA Properties, safety is in the forefront for him and what they're doing down in Costa Rica and they're a leader in that, and they're getting more bookings and more owners. That's been a cool thing. A lot of these leaders are telling me, Hey Justin, we're getting a lot of owners from this, owner acquisition is up.

And Brooke Pfautz said to me, Hey dude, we're seeing a lot of people who are Breezeway Safety Certified that are climbing that ladder. 

Heather Bayer: We talked about this years ago that we were using it in our company as a feature. And, maybe we were out there pretty early on and we were saying, when we talked to owners and we said, safety is top of our priority list, and that got us new owners.

Justin Ford: That story of you sharing that many years ago is one that I share often, and I honestly think it catches on. I think you deserve a lot of credit for what you did do with that, what you saw with that. Now, I'm going to clarify here. I believe at this point, I've been in the industry [00:08:00] since 1997, so I think I'm an… I know that you're an OG [Old Guard]. Us OGs have been talking about this for a while.

Heather Bayer: For me, it started out before I even got into the industry in Canada, when we went to our very first vacation rental in Ontario. And it was a place that my brother booked for us for a wedding. It was my ‘origin’ story, and this place was, you would've had a field day there.

But I remember that was the start of my journey in this industry. When I said I could do this and I could do it better, and I really knew nothing about safety, apart from the fact that I was there with small kids and all my time was spent worrying about how they were going to damage themselves.

Justin Ford: Right.

Heather Bayer: It wasn't a management company, it was simply the owner. My brother had found a friend who had a cottage who would rent to him. I don't think it would ever have made it into any property management portfolio, [00:09:00] but it certainly started me off on that footing that whenever I went to see a property, I'd walk in the door and look at the paving slabs round the door and then look at rugs and I think it became part of my acquisition DNA, if you like.

Justin Ford: That's absolutely true. You think about properties that have had issues and you and I look at these things and see them. I'm not going to specifically say when this happened 'cause people who follow me could quickly look back and see where I was. But within the past year, which is a lot of places I've been, I went to see a property and there was a massive failure about to happen there.

And I warned the operator, it's a big operator in our industry, that this needs to be addressed. They didn't address it. And a few weeks ago I started getting all these messages from people. Look at this thing is really bad. And I get that all the time, so I'm not always looking at 'em.

But this one caught my eye and I'm like, I've been to that property. And then I realized [00:10:00] it was that same property and that operator hadn't fixed what I recommended. There's over 1.2 million views right now on that of one of his guests who turned out to be a top contractor in the United States. It's having a massive effect on their business. You just don't know who's going to come stay at your property, and nothing prevents them now from getting on social media and speaking out and going, This Airbnb, I'm staying at. This is not safe. And the gang wagon jumps on board and suddenly it's gone global.

If there's no other reason, then you've got to do something and make sure that you're addressing safety. There's one right there.

Heather Bayer:  You've been, as you just said, traveling a lot. You speak a lot at conferences. You've just come back from the Short-term Rental Wealth Conference in Nashville. What was the vibe like there when you were talking about safety? Are the newer hosts and managers talking or showing more interest in safety than they used to?

Justin Ford: Yeah, they are. [00:11:00] Parts of it have happened out of an interesting spin that's happened. And one thing that's not talked a lot about lately is what's happening in Sevier County down in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. And in that market they've put some pretty aggressive safety requirements.

And in fact, I always like to think I've set the bar, they went over the bar. I saw some things that they're doing, like a grill 30 feet from the house. I'm like, holy smokes code’s only 10. They want it to be 30. So they've gone a little far on some occupancy, and as a result, a lot of those top real estate investors and real estate brokers in that market have gotten the notice that, hey, wow some of these properties we're having to sell because they can't meet them.

And so a lot of those folks were at this conference and so that's got them paying attention that safety can dramatically come in and have an effect on their real estate investment. And I would argue that more so than ever. These new investors that are coming into the industry at a [00:12:00] conference like STR Wealth were well paying attention. I was a busy guy. It was a four day conference. I'm not picking on our marketing team at Breezeway, but we actually could have used another person and we were busy. It was a busy time and a lot of 'em are thinking about safety.

Heather Bayer: So you are at the Breezeway booth.

Justin Ford: Yep.

Heather Bayer: So are they coming to talk to you about safety as well as other Breezeway stuff? ' Because Breezeway has a lot of other offerings in terms of operations and scheduling and just the super stuff that is out there that we were using in our company before we left. But now are you front and center on that safety pedestal?

Justin Ford: Yeah. Obviously safety is just a very small part of what Breezeway does, but we believe that safety is at the core of professionalism in the industry. And that's why my boss Jeremy Gall, the founder of Breezeway, brought me on six years ago, was because we think professionalization and leadership in this industry starts with a focus on safety. But one of the things that I've been able to do, not only obviously as getting [00:13:00] the international recognition with winning the Pioneer Award a few months ago, that really put safety out in the forefront. That got people's attention. But I'm very active, as you've probably seen in Facebook groups.

I definitely was very humbled by the number of people that came up that wanted to share stories with me that they've seen me commenting or talking about safety in Facebook for years. And wanted a picture with me, wanted to talk to me, wanted to show me that they've done things that they've told, that I've shared.

And that was just amazing for me. I'm six five, but I felt like I was seven feet at times. People coming up, going -And this is where we mounted our fire extinguisher. And my husband did this, and he wants me to make sure that he listens to you. And there was people with bracelets that said, "What would Justin do?" So it was pretty humbling. I was blown away by how many people are getting it,

Heather Bayer: Oh gosh. In my own family, Justin. The, What would Justin do?, is a catchphrase. And that's outside of me and Mike, my, [00:14:00] sister, my brother-in-law….

Justin Ford: It's a lot of pressure. Like now, fortunately, I have a wonderful and supportive wife, but she's always just, you can't do that. You can't walk across the street until the hand is white, because if you get hit, I'm gonna have to explain to everybody how my safety husband didn't do something safe.

 I've never had so much pressure to be safe. I gotta live up to what people are expecting out of me now.

Heather Bayer: You say, you had people coming up and telling you things. Did you have people tell you things where safety issues happened that actually brought them up short and said, I really need to do something about my safety? Because I'm thinking here about the story that Simon Lehman told on LinkedIn recently.

And I'll put a link to that article that he wrote into the Show Notes. But, long story short, he was at an Airbnb in London and was woken up in the middle of the night by a scream from his young son. And when they went into [00:15:00] his room, they found that he's lying in the bed covered in glass from a fallen picture frame.

And the frame had come off the wall, come down, the glass had broken, and this child was covered in glass. It must have been the most terrifying situation. But how many people would do that, would actually, go into a place and just look at a picture on a wall and say, all right, I really need to check that is secure.

Justin Ford: You know that story was horrific. And I've communicated directly with Simon about additional details that he didn't necessarily make public. 

But it scared him straight. That's enough. And for someone, in Simon's position, full disclosure, he is on the board at Breezeway.

But, for him and his position as a leader in our industry to realize that we can't keep operating like this. That doesn't happen in hotels. Pictures don't fall [00:16:00] off the walls in hotels, because they've gone to that extra step. The general public is there, I've heard so many different things come out, people relating with this.

I can't believe how many people I've heard say that's happened, to me, or to somebody else, a lot of times in properties. If you want to narrow in on the thinking that maybe this is like a small niche of safety, or hanging things on walls, it's not. A lot of people don't think about the fact that when these guests are in the properties, they're brushing up against paintings.

They're knocking mirrors off the wall. And unfortunately, when they rehang them, now that hole's a little bit bigger. And in some cases we've seen where they're like hanging it with the a different fastener that's not strong enough. Then it's just sitting back there ready to come after somebody just like it did Simon's son.

And so it's happened a lot. I talked to Nick at Proper Insurance. They've seen claims for these types of things, but it just opens up that world. And that was the other part of the discussion. A lot of people are saying, if it's a picture frame, what else could [00:17:00] happen? 

One of my famous safety videos I did in Mexico, I was actually filming the video. Someone hadn't attached a fire extinguisher very well to the wall and it actually fell and cut my hand live on video while I was talking about the importance of placement of them. So we've got to pay really close attention to every single detail. There's a quote that I used to see all the time, says, attention to detail drives everything we do. There you go. There's a motto for some company out there. That should be what your motto is.

Heather Bayer: Yeah, I just want to come in on that, about the picture falling from the wall. When we were in Banff for the Canadian Conference last year, Mike and I were staying in a condo in Canmore. And exactly the same thing happened. We weren't in the condo, we came in from the day out at the conference and a picture that had been hanging on the wall over a chair that I'd been sitting in had fallen down and it was actually [00:18:00] fallen over the chair. Now, fortunately, it was a canvas. It was one of those canvas wrapped pictures, so there was no glass involved. But still, that would've been quite the shock if I'd been sitting there and that had come down and hit me on the head. Incidentally, the host then proceeded to make a claim against us on our damage deposit.

Justin Ford: We could do a couple podcasts on that. I'm always shocked. I see it in Facebook all the time. So many hosts are saying, my guest broke my shower door and glass is everywhere. I'm gonna file a claim. And they're terrible guests. It's no, you don't understand. So many glass doors are not installed properly by contractors using quick things, that's why they're shattering. I just saw one that shattered, and it's because the way the host installed a door stopper, it was basically like a nail point. So if you opened the door too far, it was going to shatter the glass. So there's a lot of these things, and one of the things that people don't [00:19:00] take into account enough is a 20lb picture frame falling off the wall.

Falls with the force of thousands of pounds. It's not 20lb falling on you, gravity grabs it and starts pulling it. That gets into some trigonometry here. That was above my advancements in math. But I know for a fact just from studies and different things we talk about with furniture tip overs. A 50lb TV weighs 27,000lb when it tips off of a dresser. So there's a lot of weight behind these two. We need to think about that.

Heather Bayer: Yeah, and I remember Mike, in fact, when he was three or four years old. Pulling out a bottom drawer on a dresser to stand on it to get something that was on the top of the dresser. I was there and the dresser did begin to tip away from the wall, and I was able to rescue him and shut the drawer.

And then, that was the point when we thought, Oh, we really should attach these [00:20:00] dressers to the wall. So if that should happen, it's not going to fall over and crush a child. And I know this has happened.

Justin Ford: Oh, it's huge. It's one of the…, right now it's the number one cause of pediatric injury for children, things falling. And one of the things we don't know and I haven't found out from Simon what that artwork was, but one of the things we do know. Is guests, the general public, coming into your home. they sometimes don't like your artwork. You never know, but this is why this issue happens. 

As a property manager, and I bet you experienced this too, I remember coming to properties and the cleaners calling and saying, it's really odd. All the artwork is off the wall, it's in the closet. And you call the guest and it's like, why did you take the artwork down?

And they're like, you know what? My Alzheimer's mother was with us and it reminded her of her childhood at home. So we had to take them down and we didn't want to put them back wrong, so we left them there. It's things like that you don't even know. 

There was a clown in there, and my wife is scared of clowns. We took down the [00:21:00] clown picture. So you just assume that what you're posting in your properties is something that, you like it, but others..? But that's where these issues are coming from, is people sometimes just while they're on vacation, something might remind them of something they don't want, they don't like, so they're taking it down and sometimes they're putting it back,

Heather Bayer: Yep.

Justin Ford: It's putting more weight on those hooks. They get loose. 

Heather Bayer: So is this in the checklist now? Has it always been there or is it…

Justin Ford: I kinda loosely had it under furniture tip overs. We've had to add that. I've added a bunch recently, just because of issues this summer. We just enhanced the lithium battery section of our course. There's been a number of fires from guests bringing lithium battery powered devices to their properties.

There was one just down in Destin. VRMA President Jody Refosco, they had a lithium battery fire at a property across the street from them that was an STR recently. Seeing a lot of those, we've enhanced the course for that. We've been talking a lot about related [00:22:00] to signage this summer, because of a lot of issues coming up there.

So every time there's something new, we add it in and make sure that we learn from those. And that's what the FAA does with airline crashes. It's what the NTSB does, with boat and vehicle crashes. And at Breezeway, we're always trying to update, make sure people understand where these risks are.

Heather Bayer: Yeah, it's there. There was something that we encouraged owners to do and we tried to do it in many of our managed properties and that was because they were all waterfront. And, a lot of accidents happen down at the waterfront. A kid will just go into the water and they find a broken bottle just drifted down. They step on it. You've got the child that is screaming at the waterfront and somebody says, okay, we've gotta call 911. What's the address?

Justin Ford: Yeah,

Heather Bayer: They dunno where they are. They have no clue where they are or what that 911 number is if that. Put the address on a tree or on a post. [00:23:00] It's just so simple, but so many don't do it.

Justin Ford: They don't, and it's so crazy how many people don't realize that the guests have no idea where they are. They don't know where the Ospreys’ Nest cottage is when you call

Heather Bayer: Yeah.

Justin Ford: It's reminding me, one of the people who came up to me at the STR Wealth Conference showed me all these pictures they've put in a five by seven note card. It looks really nice and they went to Staples and bought these little $1.50 frames and they're by every bed in their property letting people know. So no matter what bedroom you were in, you could conveniently call 911 and say, this is where we are. So I was impressed by that.

But the other thing, and this is something else I saw at the conference a lot, I think it's important to take a pause here 'cause you and I are talking about a lot of things that happened bad. You and I both love this industry, and I say this all the time. Safety shouldn't be something you're scared of.

Oh my gosh, I gotta go take all my pictures down and make sure they have bigger hooks. And what did you say about lithium batteries? Safety is the one thing that you can address [00:24:00] in your property and actually achieve and make sure that everything's good. It's the one thing you can attain to; whereas you can't ever have the right mattress.

Guests are never gonna be happy, they're never gonna have the best view, they're never gonna have the right TV channel package and the Wi-Fi's never gonna be fast enough. But the one thing you can do, which is what we humans wanna do, we want to hit a goal, is you can make your property so that it's safe.

And if you're doing these routine checkups and checking your hooks every six months, taking a look, doing these things you're gonna be all right. So don't run away right now and go, oh my gosh, is this enough.

Heather Bayer: Let's switch it over then to the guests.

Justin Ford: Yes.

Heather Bayer: How can we educate them? And that sort of came to me today, because you'd posted this morning about the people coming down the chute on an aircraft that had a tire fire on landing. And I'm laughing, but it's not a laughing thing. They were coming down. They've obviously come to a halt. There's smoke everywhere. They've been told they have to [00:25:00] evacuate via the chute. And then there's people coming down with their carry-ons

Justin Ford: Yeah.

Heather Bayer: And we are educated that when, if something like this happens, you leave without anything, but this, all this message is not getting out. So I'm just wondering how it gets across to guests.

Justin Ford: You're probably someone who's seen this more than I have. You're from the UK. You live in Canada, and you spend the winters in the US. So you've seen a lot of different things when it comes to society and a focus on safety. The UK has a very strong focus on safety. They introduced us to safety. Chevrons on the back of fire trucks and ambulances and police cars. And when you go to the UK they wear full body suit safety gear when they're doing traffic management and control. They have a lot less incidents than we do. In Canada, even in the fire departments.

Your son being a firefighter, you don't hear about a lot of Canadian firefighters being the top chili cookoff guys. They're [00:26:00] focused on offense all the time, not defense. And in the US our society has made a decision. For whatever reason at some point, and no one's pushed a change that safety isn't really important to us. And I talk about a lot lately how at school level, we've decided that the only thing we want to teach children is about how to get out of a school when the alarm sounds. And here's a 15 minute little thing. Take this note home to your parents and make sure you practice an emergency exit drill.

And that's what our society has done. And so as a result of it, you know the example you're talking about this morning, people don't understand that you've gotta put your safety first. When you're going out of an aircraft, forget the bags. And when you grab, just because you think I'm okay, I can grab my bag.

Now the next person behind you thinks they can. And the next person. So that aircraft this morning, it took twice as long to evacuate, half the amount of people as it did that plane [00:27:00] in Japan last year that caught on fire and everybody got out. If that plane, the one in Japan that crashed into the Coast Guard jet last year, they said if that had been in the US everyone would've died.

And that's because Japan has put that there as a society. So we've been teaching our society here in the US that we react and we see that over and over again. And so as a manager, you've gotta go in and educate your guests that you don't react, that you are on the top page of this. You're not showing up on that AirDNA list as one of the operators that has the most safety complaints in their guest reviews.

You're not on that list. You are the company that people want to come stay with because you've educated your guests, that you care about safety, you're doing these safety things, and you're making sure everything's okay.

Heather Bayer: I've been looking at a lot of websites recently and just working with some companies on their websites and what they should have on them. And the ones I love is where they have a page that is on safety and how they keep their guests [00:28:00] safe.

Justin Ford: Yeah.

Heather Bayer: You've come across Justine Ireland from Just For You Holidays in the UK.

Justin Ford: Yes.

Heather Bayer: Yes she has a page on her site about safety. We talked to Justine in the SSTIR Crazy Month back in February, because she covers safety and sustainability. She covers everything.

Justin Ford: Yeah,

Heather Bayer: She's got all those Ts crossed and Is dotted in terms of responsibilities as an owner and a manager, but what she's actually doing is educating guests. So when they're coming to the site, they're saying, Oh my gosh, these people are safe and this is what they are doing to keep me safe. So it is and I think in doing that, it brings safety to the minds of the guests.

They're thinking about their own safety and their family's safety rather than being reactive. When they get to a place and they find out that actually it's not that safe.

Justin Ford: You and I were both with Sybille Kim in Vermont, at the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance this past [00:29:00] fall. She uses the word safe in her marketing for her Airbnb listing organically. She's number one in the world. And this is a cool thing that a lot of people don't think about. She's learned that making your property safe has been a great marketing tool.

She's very well booked all the time. I’ve been to her property. She can back that up that she's committed to safety. But one of the things we've learned that we never thought about was the type of guest she's getting. Think about this. A guest who cares about safety is going to come in and take better care of your property than someone who doesn't.

Guests who are educated, understand, and you are making sure you're saying, Hey, we care about safety. These are the things we do. We're not overboard. This isn't a rubber room, but we've got good smoke alarms, we've got good egress. You're going to be okay. You've just educated them. They're happy to stay there.

They've taken good care of your property. And then they go and stay with somebody else and they don't see that they're continuing to pass that education forward. So I think that's how we're gonna keep moving the needle, [00:30:00] is by educating guests when they stay with us, that we care about 'em.

Heather Bayer: Yeah, it's just educating by example really, isn't it? And that is simple. And if it's just adding another page on your website and just talking about how we keep you safe, then as you say, Sybille has got it. She's using safety as a marketing tool as well. It just seems a no brainer to me, but most of these websites that I'm looking at, they've got nothing.

Justin Ford: The worst part of it still is, it's always the people that have had an incident that now suddenly, are reacting. I get a lot of those calls lately too. Hey Justin. Yeah. I've heard you on Heather Bayer's podcast and it's great. But anyway, we just had an incident and what do we do now?

And I always tell people I don't do after, I'm the before guy. I'm trying to set you up, but you don't want to be that. And trust me, I get a lot of those calls. And it's not the way to operate in this industry. You've gotta work ahead of it.

Heather Bayer: Let's talk about the safety expert becoming a safety [00:31:00] expert. Can anyone do this?

Justin Ford: Anyone could do this. And to be honest with you, it should be fun. I said this before, but that's what we wanted when we start doing a crossword puzzle, Heather, what do we wanna do? We wanna finish it. No one likes stops. You go nuts until you get done. The human drive is to complete a task and safety is that thing that you can do.

And I think that's one of the things that I hear. over and over from people. So take the safety course. It's easy to take the Breezeway Safety Course. My boss has told me that we wanna make whatever we gotta do to get everybody in the industry taking this safety course, do it. So if you're in a position where you're not a Breezeway customer or a member of VRMA, VRNation, a lot of the different organizations who we allow free access to through their membership and you're down and out and you can't come up with the few hundred bucks for the safety course, send me a message. We've got some scholarships, we'll get you through there. There's no reason that everybody in this industry should not be taking this short course. Six [00:32:00] hours time commitment and getting safety certified so that you can get out there and do this.

Heather Bayer: We had an incident here in my house, in the room next door to me, maybe a month ago. I woke up in the morning and I smelt something burning.

So my bedroom is above the maintenance room, where the furnace is and everything, and I came downstairs and I’d just turned the air conditioning on and I came downstairs and I went into the maintenance room and there was smoke on the ceiling.

I did things I probably wouldn't have done before. I'd done the safety course. At least I, and I think it must have been just, knowing more about safety. I knew I turned the power off immediately. Get the power off because it was an electrical smell. I didn't panic.

Justin Ford: Yes.

Heather Bayer: I did not panic. Just oh, I smell this. There's smoke, there's something burning here. Get that [00:33:00] electricity off and then - we don't have a smoke alarm in the maintenance room. And I'd asked Mike about that. I said, why do we not have one here? He said, we don't…..

Justin Ford: What's your address? I'm sending you one today.

Heather Bayer: He said you actually don't have to in Canadian code.

And I said that's ridiculous.

Justin Ford: I know.

Heather Bayer: Why do we not have that, that's where all the stuff is. What it actually was, was the water heater. We called the fire department, even though the smoke stopped the moment I turned the power off. It all began to dissipate.

And I called my son, the firefighter, what do I do? And he said, probably good idea to call the fire department. And they came out and spent 15 minutes or so, and then somebody said, oh, run the hot water, turn the power on, run the hot water, which I did. And there was all sorts of sparking inside of the water heater.

Justin Ford: The elements are burned out.

Heather Bayer: Yeah it was, they just took the panel off the front and all the stuff in the front was all charred and burnt. I'm pretty sure it wasn't [00:34:00] gonna burn my house down, and I thought about you because, A, I did not panic. B, I knew just get the power turned off. We had a fire extinguisher in the basement. I didn't have to use it, because I didn't even know where the fire was, these things were there and it did come to mind and I thought, What would Justin do?"

Justin Ford: That's right. I like that. Probably the most incredible thing about what I get to do, and I'm fortunate and blessed to be in the position I'm in, is when people call me and tell me that they did something I said, and it saved life. At last count, I think I'm at 32 this year, where I know that somebody's let me know something that they did. They installed carbon monoxide alarms a week before six guests checked in and oh my gosh, the boiler backed up and they all went off. If they hadn't been there, people would've perished.

So it's incredible to continue to hear that and know that people are thinking about it. But going back to something you said there real quick, it's been a mission of mine. I've got so many missions now. We’ve [00:35:00] got picture hooks we gotta think about, but the utility areas, we see so many fires from utility areas and garages. They're bringing stuff in, and Mike said code doesn't require heat alarms, which is what should be in a garage or a mechanical area. And in this past year a really awesome new product has just come out. And it is actually a flame detector. They're on Amazon for just around a hundred dollars. I'd love to see those in all those spaces too. Because they'll detect, through infrared, a flame and you get a notification that, if you're getting a notification, there's an open flame in your garage. 

Justin Ford: But we're even seeing instances, I've had a couple people use it where they found that kids are playing with matches by putting it in the kids' room. So the tech is really starting to get up there to help support us with some of these off random things that are happening out there.

Heather Bayer: That is amazing. So as we are coming to close here. People are listening to you, they always go, [00:36:00] What should I do? What should I do first? What can I do that's quick and maybe something I can do today, but potentially lifesaving?

Justin Ford: Exactly. It's one thing if a guest is gonna trip and fall and you gotta move this carpet, but you haven't got to it yet, or there's a piece of landscaping stone in the walkway. Yeah. You gotta get to that. But no one should die. That's the worst thing.

And we see that over and over where people are like, I went on vacation. This is with my family, and it really escalates what is already a horrific tragedy that it's the worst time to do it. So make sure that's not gonna happen. Make sure your smoke alarms are all working, test them. It's easy to do that. Guests do pull the batteries. They've got new smoke alarms that are out there. We've been talking a lot about the new UL 217 smoke alarms. You're seeing them in all the hardware stores appearing right now, and make sure you’ve got carbon monoxide alarms and make sure your egress is good.

It's been a hot summer. I've seen a lot. When I was [00:37:00] just in Nashville, I went out and about, someone, actually one of the people staying there showed me their Airbnb. All the egress windows were blocked because they'd put air conditioners in them. If there was a fire, your guests can't take this massive air conditioner in dark, thick smoke and shove it out the window. It shouldn't have been there. So this is that midsummer check-in that maybe it quickly jumped and threw an air conditioner in a window to attend to an quick issue. But now you gotta move it. Because unless they've got good egress to the exterior of the property, they're not gonna go.

So make sure you've just covered those few things that at least nobody's going to…, tighten the pool gate latches so the kids can't get out to the pools when they shouldn't, check those pool alarms. That's where we're seeing the worst of the incidents in the industry.

Heather Bayer: What about fire blankets in kitchens?

Justin Ford: This is always a surprise to people. In the United States, I don't wanna see fire blankets in short-term rentals. Because if it's that kind of a fire, I don't want the guests messing around with it. Most people in the United States are not educated on how to use a fire blanket. [00:38:00] I either want them to use the fire extinguisher, I want them to get out of the property. And so we've seen some incidents where people have tried to use a fire blanket. This is how screwy it goes. They actually think they have to wear it. I was with the head of Trust & Safety for VRBO not long ago and they had a guest complaint at VRBO where the guest said there was only one fire blanket, but there was eight of us and we were cold. So that's not what a fire blanket is for. That just shows the education. 

Yeah. If you have a bunch of people from the UK coming to stay at your property, and that's all you're getting is people from the UK or from New Zealand. Put a fire blanket in. They know how to use it, but Americans don't. And it's not in code. Code doesn't mention the word fire blanket. But they do fire extinguishers. So put an emphasis on that.

Heather Bayer: And finally fire extinguishers, checking them. What do you do with checking? And I know we talk about this every time we meet, we talk about fire extinguishers. I know this. I have this firefighter son who comes to my house and checks my fire [00:39:00] extinguisher. So what do you do with the fire extinguisher? Because they can sit there for years, can't they?

Justin Ford: Yeah, you gotta do the turnover checklist. I was at an Airbnb recently and I went in and the fire extinguisher was still in the box under the sink. I don't think people realize that it takes about 14 seconds to take a fire extinguisher out of a box, and that's me, who knows how to do it. It can take a while.

You gotta get it out, and then the pin and the package is in there and the mounting brackets with the screws that you never did anything with. It's still in the box, so you've gotta have that out there. But then I pulled this one out. And the gauge was on empty. It had been used at some point. 

I can't tell you how many times I go to short-term rentals and they're so proud. We've heard you, we've got the fire extinguisher. I'm like, that's great. Looks like a guest already used it. And they're like, what? I'm like, yeah, you gotta check it. The cleaner needs to go by and look. They use it, and then they don't want to tell you that they used it because they're embarrassed.

They used it on the grill, they used it on the fire pit, whatever they did. And then they just hung it back up and went whoops. We better [00:40:00] get outta here before these guys yell at us. So check the gauges on them. Check and follow the procedures you're supposed to.

Heather Bayer: There is so much more we could talk about,  just as when we do this, every time we chat. 

Justin Ford: I can talk days and days about safety. There's so many fun little things to talk about with this. And that's the approach you've gotta have is that we've gotta make sure everything's all set in our properties, 'cause again, and I've shared this on your podcast before, I just wanna emphasize it again. We already have enough trouble dealing with that vacation brain and with people that are coming into our properties. The general public, that's hard, but they're drinking. Three quarters of your guests are gonna get intoxicated, so it really puts us way behind the bar. So you gotta do that extra work to make sure everything's okay.

Heather Bayer: Yeah. That is such an important point, and it's something I remember so well from working with guests, working with owners for so many years that [00:41:00] vacation brain just gets into place from the moment they arrive and certainly in that first 12 hours….

Justin Ford: Yeah,

Heather Bayer: …before they get accustomed to a place, that is when the accidents happen, because they're just not accustomed to that place. They walk into a hotel room. It's all on one level.

Justin Ford: Yeah.

Heather Bayer: And that's it. There aren't steps up and steps down and weird and quirky little things that they have to do. So yeah I'm getting into the next thing, which would be, vacation brain in the first 12 hours.

But you're absolutely right, you've just gotta be on top of it all the time.

Justin Ford: I had somebody come up to me, I'll just close out with this. I had somebody come up to me at the STR Wealth Conference and ask me this, and then it, for some reason, it just kept coming. I must have been asked this 10 or 15 times. I've listened to you, I've done a lot of different things to make my property safe. Can you come there? How can I know that I've done that? And so my advice was the same to all of them. Find someone who's never been [00:42:00] to your property before. Give them a suitcase and invite them over in the evening. Have them come into your house and just watch them. Don't say, don't do this, don't do that. It is mind blowing because you've been going to your property in the daytime or your properties if you're a manager during the daytime and you're not dragging a suitcase with you and looking at your cell phone, but as soon as you see somebody do that, all these different issues are gonna come to mind. That's one of the best things that you can do to learn and understand how to make sure your property is set up safely.

Heather Bayer: Justin, I speak for thousands if not millions of people. When I thank you for all you do in this industry. You've saved lives, which is the most amazing feat and saved many of them with everything you share. So thank you as ever for taking the time to spend an hour with me.

Justin Ford: You as well., I have always loved everything you're doing for the industry, and just by letting me share and talk about [00:43:00] this, you're doing the same thing as I am. So thank you.

Heather Bayer: It won't be the last time, so until next time, have a great time in Scotland.

Justin Ford: Thank you.

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