Andrea Bayer

Welcome to this episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This episode is brought to you by the Kind Sponsorship from OwnerRez, providing a powerful and flexible system for managing vacation rental properties. OwnerRez provides booking and maintenance management, payment scheduling and collection, as well as insightful reporting. OwnerRez will provide you with a long-term booking foundation that is scalable for your vacation rental business while fully managing your channel listings, but still focusing on your brand, your website, and your way of doing things. Listen into the mid-episode break where you will hear more about this internationally recognized leader in vacation rental software. For more information about OwnerRez, click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device. Let's get started. Here is your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer

In today's episode, I am talking to one of the most dynamic couples in this industry, and that is Elaine and Lance Stitcher of Seaside Vacations in Chincoteague Island, Virginia and Ocean City, Maryland.  Seaside Vacations has grown rapidly over the past few years and we're going to explore what's behind that dynamic growth and the tips they can bring every manager on how to build a really successful company.

Heather Bayer

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

Heather Bayer

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and as ever, I am hugely delighted to be back with you once again. So it seems like a theme is running through these episodes at the moment and I've been interviewing some really great property managers recently. You heard last week from Tyann Marcink, whose two brands in Missouri, Missouri Haus and Branson Family Retreats are doing really, really well.  And she told us about her methods of acquiring new owners and the criteria she has put in place to ensure that the brand quality remains high. And I think that's something that any property manager needs to be thinking about now as we get into such a competitive market.

Heather Bayer

So today it's the turn of Lance and Elaine Stitcher from Seaside Vacations in Chincoteague Island and Ocean City, and they have been on the show a couple of times. We talked to them around about the time of COVID – do you remember that – and how they were recovering after the first year? I think that's when we did the first episode and then I caught up with them again in May of last year after the VRMA Spring Forum, and I'll put those two episodes in the Show Notes so you can take a look at them.

Heather Bayer

It takes a lot for me to invite somebody back onto the show a second time, and when you hear them again, you'll know it's because we had such a good response to earlier episodes. And I'm sure we're going to have a similar sort of response to my discussion with Lance and Elaine today because Seaside Vacations has grown rapidly over the past few years and I want to find out what is the secret behind that growth and that success.

Heather Bayer

And as you heard from Travis Wilburn and Rebecca Lombardo a couple of weeks ago, Seaside Vacations are a part of the 100 Collection. And if you don't know what the 100 Collection is, then go back to that episode and listen to it. Because to me, this really shows where this level of the industry is going, that property managers are going to a new level of excellence, of hospitality, of raising standards to ensure that they shine above the masses that are coming in behind them. So Seaside Vacations is part of the 100 Collection, we're going to be talking about that. We're also going to be talking about community involvement, because this is what we hear from all these successful property managers, that they are so strong in their local communities and that's how a reputation gets spread far and wide. So without further ado, let's move on over to let Lance and Elaine tell you about their success.

Heather Bayer

Well, I'm super delighted to have with me today once again Lance and Elaine Stitcher from Seaside Vacations in Chincoteague Island, Virginia, and Ocean City, Maryland. Welcome.

Elaine Stitcher

Thank you, Heather. It's so good to be back with you again. It feels like it's been forever.

Heather Bayer

Yes, we had such a good conversation after the VRMA Spring Forum, I think that was the last one, and I'm putting your previous episodes on the Show Notes so people can check those out. I was just saying, actually, in the introduction that I think very hard before I have anybody back onto the show for a second time. It's not a matter of I haven't got anybody else to talk to,  it's more of who people want to hear from. And you're definitely the people that the audience wants to hear from. So I'm so glad to have you back. You are not in Maryland. Where are you?

Elaine Stitcher

We're not, or Virginia. We are sitting in sunny and beautiful Key Largo.

Heather Bayer

That sounds wonderful. In fact, you were saying that it would have been nice to record this episode outside, but the wind in the palm trees is too loud.

Elaine Stitcher

Yes.

Heather Bayer

And so for those in my audience who are sitting up in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Canada, just ignore that last part, just wipe it out. It is very nice down here in the south at the moment, although looking out my back window, you wouldn't think so. It's been a little rainy this morning.

Heather Bayer

But anyway, I wanted to have you back for a couple of reasons. One is because Seaside Vacations is growing.  And it really is growing, I'm seeing this happening when I'm reading LinkedIn and I'm talking to people and then talking to Travis about the 100 Collection. And I wanted to have you back on as well, because you have a lot of community involvement, and I wanted to talk about that as well because it seems to be a theme that's running through this new collection of property managers that are local to their communities. And there seems to be a clear distinction now between the property managers who live, eat, and breathe their locations and those that sit in New York and manage 50 properties in Miami and 40 properties in Phoenix.  So that's where we're coming from. So can we start with just recapping on Seaside Vacations and a quick where you started and how it's grown in the last few years?

Lance Stitcher

Sure, absolutely. We started Seaside Vacations realistically in the winter going into the spring of 2015/2016. Our growth curve had been fairly linear since that time frame, jumping 25% to 35% annually. We project that to begin to level off now. For example, in our Virginia market, we've reached where we've got a significant market share. Now we're focusing on quality, not just growth, but quality properties. When we look to our north in Ocean City, Maryland, it's a huge rental market, with thousands of rentals up there. We're also pushing the 150-175 envelope in that market…

Elaine Stitcher

…..in less than a year's time.

Lance Stitcher

In less than a year's time, we've gone from yeah, that journey has been about two – two and a half years where we've really put some effort into that. But once again, we're focusing on quality. We've been very fortunate to be invited into a number of very quality buildings with great amenities, and we're looking for the cream of the crop. And that 25%-35% annual growth is not going to continue forever because there does become a time when it's just very difficult to continue to deliver the same experience to the owners and to the guests.

Elaine Stitcher

And this is something that resonates with me. If you ever run into Lance at a conference, someone will say, what do you have, 350 properties now? Do you have 500? And he'll say, “No, ask me next year”. And that always about gives me a heart attack. I'm much more cautious with our growth, and we've definitely turned away more properties in Virginia this year than we have taken.  In Ocean City, while the journey has been over the last two years, in the last year we've actually gone from having no physical office in Ocean City to having three and three major buildings. And our Ocean City team just met with another building – we might be getting another one for this year. So that's been very fast and very exciting. But again, I'm always concerned about being able to maintain that ‘Mom and Pop'-ness, which I think, like you said, at the local level people really want that now. Guests want to connect with us and know that they're coming to visit someone they can trust.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. And I think that was one of the questions I have, is how do you manage different locations? Do you have general managers in place in different places, or key staff that manage the different offices?

Lance Stitcher

Oh, absolutely, we couldn't do it without our team, and we've been focusing on building our team and training them so that they can essentially run the business in our absence if need be. Ocean City, we've got very strong managing partners up there in Jason and Dorothy. Couldn't do Ocean City as well as we do without that team.

Elaine Stitcher

We're very blessed to have amazing people in both markets. Like we were saying, we could never do Ocean City, and actually, we could not be sitting in Key Largo for four weeks without the incredible people that we have working with us. We're very, very lucky, and we're huge on education. Anybody who's seen us at a conference will see us with eight to ten people in tow, which has been insane, but worth every nickel to have them taking advantage of this education.

Heather Bayer

Yes. I was looking back on previous podcasts, and I think it was a question I'd asked in a previous one about the fact that you were at the VRMA Conference and you have this team going with you and how important that was, and yeah, always, always loved that approach. So what are the major milestones, if you look back, you know, since you started? Because I know when I was running a property management company, there was a tipping point. We got to about 35 properties….oh, I think we got to 13, and that was one tipping point, and then 35 was the second one, and then 100. So it's tipping points in terms of staffing, in terms of technology, in terms of just general operations, what are yours?

Lance Stitcher

So I would agree with you 100% that there are several different phases and tipping points in this journey that we've been on. At the beginning, they were probably 10, 25, 35, 50, and 75 were all tipping points, and that we had to bring on a little bit of help or a little bit of technology, or we had to change something about the way that we did business in order to prepare for the next round. Once we got to that 75 property level is when things began to get very real and very interesting. And it was helpful that we had experience managing a large property management company prior. We knew what the roadmap ahead needed to look like in order to continue to be successful. And that's when technology…. we made a few major changes, including changing our PMS platform. We have since changed our accounting platform, but having an idea of where you want to go is incredibly important, because you just have to be able to have the tools to make those next moves.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I fully agree that the wider picture, the five-year plan, maybe the ten-year plan for us was always super important, because if you don't have a goal in mind, you have no way of really knowing how you're going to get there.

Elaine Stitcher

Right. And I have to give my husband credit, he is always two steps ahead. We jumped on the Track bandwagon almost before anyone else and we all thought he was crazy because we did it in the peak season and it was incredibly overwhelming and stressful, but he was dead on. We did it at the right time and I'm so thankful that we did. And we just keep trying to stay two steps ahead. We're actually about to roll out our new website we've been working on for the last several months as well. Again, just to stay ahead of the pack. And that should be happening next week, early next week, so we're really excited about that as well.

Heather Bayer

Oh, I bet. So can you share who's doing a website?

Lance Stitcher

Absolutely. We've been working with ICND now for several years and this is actually just an upgrade to their new Axis platform. We actually started working on it, probably. I think we committed to this last June. We've taken a little bit longer than we should to get this built out, but it's a project that we wanted to get right. Our current website works phenomenally. It's not something we needed to do, we wanted to be prepared for what the next digital revolution/transformation looks like…..

Elaine Stitcher

….Because what does Brandon Sauls say?  If you ain't first……

Lance Stitcher

……you're last.

Heather Bayer

Yes, interesting.  ChatGPT has been the big thing the last two months. You're hearing nothing but what prompts do I use to get the right answers? My sister just dropped in – she's down here as well – and she said, I've just been looking at this thing, it's amazing. And I said, do you know you're way behind the curve?

Lance Stitcher

I've had eyeballs on it a little bit. We've been so busy with trying to get a few projects completed that I not had the energy to look at what's the next best thing coming.

Elaine Stitcher

Which leads to our other major milestone from this year. We just opened our laundry facility, which has been insane, absolutely insane. And we just hired a laundry operations manager and our first actual real head of housekeeping. Two incredibly important hires that we were very nervous about getting right, and we do feel we got it right. And the equipment was delivered a week ago. Lance was actually having them install it via Zoom, if you can imagine.

Lance Stitcher

Yeah, that was really difficult to not be present for. But all of the planning and preparation work had been done, and the installation went smoothly because these large laundry machines, for those that aren't aware, they require significant infrastructure. In our case, three-phase power. We had to cut up a perfectly beautiful concrete floor to add in a reinforced pad to support these new high-G, 400 G-force machines. So there's twelve inches of concrete over top of a six inch stone compacted base. We then came back behind that after that was done, and we epoxy coated the floor with a map of where the pad was for the washers and dryers. But because we had epoxy coated, the floor kind of had to refer to the map to make sure that everything went in the correct location. No ‘oops', it was all planned for.

Lance Stitcher

And then, I think one of the conversations that I've heard on a number of podcasts, hot water has always been a concern. So we spent extra time in engineering the hot water system to make sure that we had not only what we needed today, but what we may need in the future.  Because we've built infrastructure in to add additional machines, kind of plug-and-play, we can just drop in additional machines as we continue to grow.

Elaine Stitcher

And for those who don't know the significance of this, in our market, our little island, Chincoteague, is three by seven. We do not have a sewer system. No one in our market was including linens. We would have to drive an hour twice a week, once to pick up our linen packages, once to return the dirty linens. It was exhausting, it was expensive. It was becoming insanely expensive for guests to even opt for that. So we had to find an off-island facility that had a sewer in which we could do this. So we are literally the first in our Virginia market to be able to include linens. And that has been very exciting and interesting. Nine out of ten guests are absolutely thrilled. But to my surprise, there's been the rare one that couldn't imagine sleeping on someone else's linens, and that blew me away. I could not wrap my head around that. But overall it's been very widely received and it's huge. And we're the only ones, which is just a huge feather in our cap.

Heather Bayer

So you supply linens to all your properties?

Elaine Stitcher

Yes, every home, every stay, every time, with beds made.

Heather Bayer

That's fantastic. I know the pain here, because Ontario was very similar to the way things happen on Chincoteague. Guests were used to bringing their own linens, and even up to the time I left we still had guests who said, I don't want anything left for me, I want to bring my own.

Elaine Stitcher

And especially that transition point from the reservations that were already made that didn't include them, transitioning to the ones that did, and reaching out to guests. That was a rough couple of weeks, but I think we're past that point now and it's going pretty smoothly.

Heather Bayer

This is such a great conversation and we're going to come back to it in just a few moments. We're moving over to our sponsor OwnerRez as I pose another question to the founder, Paul Waldschmidt.

Heather Bayer

So welcome back, Paul. I wanted to ask you about the Channel Bridge. What is it and what types of data can it import?

Paul Waldschmidt

Yeah, great question. Channel Bridge is something we're really proud of, and it's kind of interesting because Channel Bridge is kind of what put us on the map originally and I think drove a lot of our early growth. So Channel bridge is a tool, it's a Chrome extension that you can install for the Chrome browser. And it basically acts like a little miniature robot that goes into your Vrbo, Airbnb or TripAdvisor account and imports and downloads booking data and review data as well. So it was built years ago, and it was designed as a tool to kind of ‘bridge the gap' between what channels allowed for integration and what they didn't allow, and then just average users who wanted to import data out of the channel. So it can download booking data, it can download review data. But it's something we're really proud of, and it's not used by everyone now because of the newer API integrations. But it is kind of a cool tool that kind of first put us on the map and showed people that we were really committed and dedicated to solving the needs of homeowners and PMs.

Heather Bayer

And now back to my conversation with Lance and Elaine Stitcher from Seaside Vacations.

Heather Bayer

So what about pain points? There must have been a number of pain points over the last few years. What have you encountered? Is there anything that you would do differently if you were starting over?

Lance Stitcher

Oh, my goodness. If I was starting over and could do it differently, I would probably find a way to make laundry work in-house much sooner.

Elaine Stitcher

But you need money for that. In our early years, there was no money for that.

Lance Stitcher

You do need money for that. But instituting a laundry and linen program, when the first year is operational, it's going to be in two markets that are 40 miles apart, traffic problems, and you're doing in excess of 10,000 reservations. It brings in its own pain points because it's not just washers and dryers and sheets and towels. It's staffing, it's trucks, it's logistics. In fact, it's more logistics than anything. Chemicals, hot water, sewer. Yeah. So this has been three to five years in the planning process; that's been huge.  Going back to pain points over the time, anytime you're implementing software or changing software.  Software changes are probably more difficult than additions because you have to unlearn the old ways and learn the new ways as you're making the transition from an old platform to a new platform. We've been fortunate that we've only had to do that once on the property management side. We've had to make a pivot in the transition on dynamic pricing tools only once in our journey. But we feel like we've got that right. And we're huge fans of Breezeway, that was a hard, risky move. When they came to us while we were shut down for the pandemic and said, hey guys, we think now is the ideal time to onboard you.  We're like, great, we've got the time to onboard this, but no way to pay for it.

Elaine Stitcher

Things fortunately, have a way of working out. We all got really lucky in that regard. Housekeeping, one of everyone's sore spots, without a doubt. Over the past years, we've been trying to bring it 100% in house. Last year, I would say it was about 75% in house. We had to use one or two vendors for lack of being able to find good people. And that's always a pain point. And this year we're doing things a little bit differently. We're trying to offer even more and better incentives. We're bringing in some professionals to actually train and to give our cleaners the tools to do the best job possible. So I'm very excited about that. I mean, it's very difficult to look a cleaner in the face when you're dealing with a complaint, if you didn't properly train them and give them the tools to succeed.  And even finding the right chemicals and tools, you would not believe what a fuss housekeepers can put up about one particular kind of mop or broom.  Things you never really thought about, it's unbelievable. It's been a real challenge for us to find a mop that everybody won't fight over. But that's coming together, and I'm excited about that.  But that's hands down one of the hardest things that we have to deal with and finding the people.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I think you hear that from everybody.

Lance Stitcher

As you've been through as well, those pain points, they come at different stages of that growth. And we talked about tipping points before. And you can set up a property management company to be profitable and reasonably successful at a given level, like 75 properties. But when you go out and you go from 75 to 80, you have to add in another layer of staffing and another layer of technology. Geography can play a huge role in that, but every business has phases where they are their most profitable. And then when you begin to grow past that, you layer on another team, and then you're not as profitable at 80 as you were at 75. And now you've got a race to get to 100 to get to the same profitability level as you were at 75.

Heather Bayer

Yes, growth is never easy. You think that you're going up this nice trajectory and it's all going to get smoother the more you grow. And no, it doesn't actually work like that. So you actually articulated that really well.

Lance Stitcher

Growth is not easy. Growth is expensive. There are certainly returns for it, but it doesn't come immediately, it takes time. Just the onboarding process of adding 75 properties with photography and 3D tours, just the marketing budget, adding those properties, if you're going to use any listing sites. They come with expenses as well. So, yes, growth is not inexpensive.

Heather Bayer

Talking about listing sites, how is your direct booking? Do you do a large proportion of booking directly through your website?

Lance Stitcher

We have worked very hard on that since day one. We actually built our first direct booking website before we had any properties. We knew which direction we were going. Last year we were up to 60% direct. This year we've had a really, really strong December, January. November through now has been really strong and we are pushing 80% this year. I expect that we will see that number slide a little bit, but we've been very successful this last year.

Heather Bayer

That's always great to hear. And I think once again, the property managers who are local to their areas, they seem to be performing so much better on book direct than those who are doing this much more remotely. And we're going to be talking about community in a minute.

Lance Stitcher

And as part of our job, we do use listing sites, but once that guest comes to us one time, it's our job to make sure that they know where to come the second time.

Heather Bayer

You're also in a good repeat market, I assume, so you've got those people who come in and you can re-market to them and they will go back and share. So that's a real benefit, I know.

Heather Bayer

Let's talk about the 100 collection. I had such a great discussion with Travis and Rebecca, and the first thing I said, well, what is this, 100? You're got 100 properties or 100 companies? And he said, no, 100%. And oh, gosh, I wish I could have thought of that and I didn't.

Elaine Stitcher

That's been a really cool experience and we're just getting started and Travis and Rebecca and Kristen have done an amazing job. Right after Thanksgiving we had to go to Charlottesville for a real estate meeting. So of course Travis was like, come on down, spend a few days. You want to talk about hospitality? He is definitely top of the class with what he does. He provides an amazing experience and getting to see some of his properties and what it means to him to be a part of the 100 Collection. Not to mention that man knows every single place you can get a good margarita. He is the guy if you want a good margarita. So it's a great town. We had an absolutely wonderful time. But no, we were talking about that earlier. We are still in the onboarding process, partially because we're waiting for our new website to roll out. But there's so many different ways this is going to be a wonderful thing to be a part of. There's the obvious that being revered by our peers,  not just for having the properties to be a part of this, but our service, our business, our ethics, the kind of business we run, our hospitality, that is a huge compliment to even be considered to that.

Elaine Stitcher

And I was thinking about this with our owners and I just recently reached out to all of our owners who are going to be a part of this collection, the first wave, and they were absolutely thrilled. And the way I looked at it was, we are finally able to reward you for all of the time and love and passion and work that you have put into your vacation rental to make it this premier property. These owners that we made a part of this, they just work hard. Every detail that you could imagine in that home is there and they care about it as much as we do. We all wish we had every single owner just like that. And on the flip side, one of my initial concerns was, what am I going to say to the owners who look at me and say, well, why aren't I a part of that? And then we get this opportunity to explain this standard to them and hopefully it will incentivize them to do better, to want to raise their property to the standard so they can be part of this very cool thing.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I love that idea and I know we thought about it at one time, long before the 100 Collection had been thought of, and we were going to create what we would call the Signature Collection, and it was going to be those properties that reach that standard. But there was always at the back of it,  exactly as you were saying, those owners that are going to be saying, well, why can't we be there?

Lance Stitcher

And the answer to that question is you can be there, and here are the things that we need to improve to get you to the next level.

Heather Bayer

Great incentive.

Lance Stitcher

You've already been involved with this – well, obviously the 100 Collection is a new thing and when it first came out, I was a little bit shy about it, a little bit gun-shy. And I told Elaine, I was like, this is one of the things that: A) It's an honor to be invited and to be recognized by your peers to be one of the premier property managers for your destination. B) We submitted a property that didn't make peer review and it was a home that we liked, but they said these are the reasons why; we think the couch is a little bit dated.

Elaine Stitcher

Yes. And that was really an education, because, especially Rebecca is amazing. Boy, does she know her stuff. And we would go through listings and just look at every teeny, tiny detail and I thought I knew a lot and she taught me to look for things that I never even noticed – and I'm extremely particular.  But she was a photographer as well and definitely has a great eye for that. So I've been able to go back to some other owners and encourage them to make some changes. And on the other side of that, I've had to drop an owner that just refused to make some updates that were costing us time and money and poor reviews, and they wouldn't do it. So, part of growth is also knowing what properties you have to let go of along the way.

Heather Bayer

Yes, that's a very important point, and I made that point when I was talking to Travis, that a couple of years ago we actually lost our top performing property, and it had been our top performer for a couple of years. But the time taken with the owners, consistently spending time with them, making sure that things were exactly as they should have been, and also to stop them knocking on the door, which they did quite often, going to visit the guests, which they liked to do.

Lance Stitcher

One of our mentors, that I won't mention, in relation to this conversation, She was distraught. She had to fire an owner of one of her top performing properties. And I said, well put this in perspective for me. What are we talking about? And this particular property did nearly $280,000 in rentals the year prior. And I almost choked….

Elaine Stitcher

….that's mind boggling. We don't have anything that does that.

Lance Stitcher

I couldn't stomach firing somebody that had that type of property, but it needed to be done.

Heather Bayer

Well, anyway, it was interesting because when we did, it certainly wasn't at that level, but it was a pretty high number we were talking about. But once it was gone, the productivity of the team rose, we had time back, and you start adding up the cost of all that time that was spent on the guests and on the owners.

Lance Stitcher

We've picked that up from people like yourself and other people that we've been looking up to for years and have come to realize that if you go to your staff, if the team names three properties that when the owner calls, we cringe. Those are the ones to look at with a very filtered lens.

Elaine Stitcher

Something that I'm struggling with right now as we've grown so much and so quickly, is a small handful of properties that have been with us since day one, when we were nobody. And they took a leap of faith with us. We didn't have a reputation yet, we didn't have much of anything yet. But they took a chance and they're still with us. But even though our business is almost ten years old, they've not updated anything in that time. They don't want to make changes. They don't want to put money in. You feel this loyalty because they took a chance with you. But we're really at a turning point right now, where, do we want our brand associated with that home if they're not willing to put some money back into it? So I'm really struggling with about five properties right now, and I'm going to reach out to the owners one last time and explain our position and just hope and pray they're willing to make some changes.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I know that pain all too well. We started in 2003 and I think by 2018/2019, we still had some of those original properties, and it would be fingers crossed that they're going to go this year because the owners were just so lovely. But at one point, we had to say, times have changed, things have changed. They didn't want to include cleaning because when they started, the guests had to do their own cleaning before they left. And these owners were still mired in that era.

Elaine Stitcher

And we say that too because we just parted ways with owners this week of a small condo, but in a very popular waterfront building. It fills up every year. It's a very beloved property. They did not like that we added linens. They wanted to part ways because now guests were going to have to have their own linens. And they were one of those owners that you cringed when the phone rang with them anyway, so it was probably a good thing. But can you imagine, like, here we think we're doing something amazing for our entire industry, our guests, our owners, absolutely everyone. And they saw it as an issue. So that showed that it was a very good time to say goodbye.

Lance Stitcher

That first property, which is a small property, and for a lot of families, it had a sleeper sofa, which was an important amenity. And the owners came down and they made a great upgrade. They were here for a week during the early part of our busy season. On the way out the door, they called and said, hey, I just want to let you guys know we made an upgrade, we got a new couch. We're like,  super! 05:00 that evening, we get a call from the incoming guest, hey, we can't figure out how to get the sleeper sofa set-up. I was like, well, it's really easy, and I'm walking them through it and no, it doesn't work. And I went over there and the new couch was not a sleeper sofa. And we had a full season's worth of bookings coming in behind them. So we ate a little crow, we provided a nice air mattress and just said, hey, look, this is really unfortunate, but this is the best we can do right now.

Heather Bayer

Yes, it's a difficult conversation to have, and we had it on a number of occasions.  But it started with, “Things have changed in the last 15 years. This is what's changed and this is what you need to do.”

Elaine Stitcher

And as we know, safety has been taking a center seat over the past couple of years, and I think Justin Ford is a household name. But interestingly enough, I just recently turned down a property in the community in which we lived. This was a really tough one. We sold this family the home in our community. We knew they wanted to rent it. We told them all of the rules, how to set it up, here's how we can succeed. They did not listen to us at all. And they set up a home that, according to the community rules, can sleep six. They set it up to sleep 13 people with 4 bunk beds. Queen over queen, pyramid, bunk beds galore in front of every window. I was in the house on the phone with Justin Ford, sending him pictures. Can you believe this? Can you believe this? So we already had a signed agreement with the owner and he turned around and did these things. So we had to terminate the relationship just based on safety issues. And it was a shiny, brand new, beautiful home, but I just knew it was going to be an issue.  We were setting ourselves and them up for failure and headaches and it just was not worth it.

Heather Bayer

I still don't understand why people want to fit multiple people into a home when it's entirely unnecessary.

Elaine Stitcher

I know.  Most don't, fortunately.  Most are more concerned about their home than that. But some people think the more people, the more money.

Heather Bayer

Yes.

Lance Stitcher

And even with the occupancy rules stating six on a home like that, if you post that this house sleeps six people, yet you post pictures of 13 beds yeah.

Elaine Stitcher

People don't listen. They're bringing 13 people, they're going to break the rules.

Lance Stitcher

We've seen that before.

Elaine Stitcher

So that was a tough one. But with years in the business and wisdom and confidence, all of that grows and gives you the strength. I don't hesitate anymore, if I know something is not a good fit, it's just done.

Heather Bayer

Yes. It's a luxury that comes over time. Absolutely. Speaking to Tyann Marcink last week, and she's starting with that in mind, right from the get go. Because she's been managing all her own properties and she builds these massive places, so it's not necessary for her, really, to take on anything and everything, which is what we often do right at the very beginning. All comers, anything that somebody else has rejected ‘we'll have', just because you want to build that inventory. But it's a luxury to get to the point where you can select on your criteria. Maybe for people starting up, that's the way to go now. It is. Just set yourself up as something unique, as a company that is unique, that will only take on the best.

Lance Stitcher

Sure. And we've had the pleasure of knowing Tyann for over ten years now. I believe I met her at a VRMA event in 2012 or 2013, when she was actually there to speak about real estate photography.

Heather Bayer

Was that the Home Away Summit?

Lance Stitcher

It could have been, because I have only ever been to one Home Away Summit…

Heather Bayer

…In Phoenix?

Elaine Stitcher

I've seen her speak about photography itself.

Lance Stitcher

That could have been where we were.

Heather Bayer

We were talking about that, because that's where I met Tyann and it's where I met Matt Landau for the first time.

Lance Stitcher

Yes, that makes sense because when I was at another property management company, we were researching software, and I believe I did go to the Home Away Summit that year to look at their software offerings as well.

Elaine Stitcher

And you mentioning Matt Landau. We were talking about milestones. Another huge one for us this year was to be approached by him to be in his “Homerunners” series. And this all kind of ties into the community involvement as well. We had Matt and Stuart and Tammy come and join us. They were a part of our community. They stayed in one of our homes. They danced at street parties with us. It was one of the most incredible experiences and that was amazing for him to come. He's been a mentor of ours from day one. I mean, who does not walk away from a conversation with Matt inspired and ready to take on the world? So for him to come and invite us to do that was so much fun this year. We had such a great time with it.

Lance Stitcher

I'm going to close out one loop that I kind of started, and it really does come back to community. Almost everything we do comes back to community and the fabric of community, and it's something that we've been building since day one. But what I was going to mention with Tyann was that she got involved with the Vacation Rental Managers over ten years ago and she's immersed herself in this community and she's been surrounded by the best of the best for years. So she has not started up her property management business with any blind spots or blind eyes, because she has all the connections and she's been able to ask anybody anything for very long time.

Lance Stitcher

When Matt was looking to do a smaller scale Homerunners project, he came to us about doing Homerunners Shorts. We were like, yes, we are all in. So we did two episodes with him. They've had rave reviews. But once again, Matt's family does not live terribly far from us. So in conjunction with filming, he brought his parents down to stay at one of our properties for their 50th wedding anniversary, which became a part of the episode because Matt cooked us all dinner.

Elaine Stitcher

It was so much fun.

Lance Stitcher

Yes, I mean, community can mean a lot of different things and have a lot of different definitions. And yes, we are very involved in our communities of Chincoteague and Ocean City and Captains Cove. Always have been, always will be. We've also been very blessed to be involved in our community of our peers and our other property managers and through VRMA and other events and getting to meet people like Matt Landau and yourself and Tyann, who have all the answers to all the questions all the time. And if they don't, they'll say, hey, have you ever considered talking to this person over here? Because they're really sharp in that field.

Elaine Stitcher

It becomes something much bigger than just about education and peers. It becomes a family. So we were talking about this this morning. We built our brand on the Seaside Family and it just sort of naturally evolved over the years with our team, our community involvement, everything. And I feel like our VRMA family is the same way.

Elaine Stitcher

It all comes back to family and these relationships that we've built with our owners, with our guests, with our team and the Homerunners Shorts. One of the really cool things with that is our whole team got to participate in that. And then as that was released into the community and the locals saw it, we're becoming known as the business to work for in our community, which is such an honor and such a privilege. And that has just sort of happened inadvertently. We didn't really see that happening, but here it is, and it's a wonderful thing.

Heather Bayer

Well, we talked earlier about you taking your staff to conferences and having them experience what VRMA for sure can share. But I also see on your social media output how close you are with the staff, the dinners and the evenings together. This is not a come to work and go home at the end of the day and forget all about it.

Elaine Stitcher

No, it is not. They are such a huge part of our life. We genuinely love them and they are so close with each other. I can't even believe how blessed we are with this. But in any given day, we work really hard, but we also play really hard. And they are like brothers and sisters, and they play practical jokes on each other. And we've taken it a step farther. We'll put the practical jokes that they play on each other onto our social [media] and guests love it. Guests start to feel like they're a part of this and they know our team and they know us and they know the jokes, and it's so much fun.

Heather Bayer

Well, I've got to ask this one as well. You are sort of the power couple of this industry. So you work together throughout the day?

Elaine Stitcher

All day. Every day.

Heather Bayer

Every day. How does that go down?

Elaine Stitcher

Really well. Every now and then, Lance does something wrong – I don't, I'm always right – but he does something wrong every day. No, seriously, it's really good. I am definitely the more Type-A, wound up, we gotta go, go, go, and he's more laid back. And we balance each other. I always say together we make one mostly normal person and it just, I don't know, it works. People had me terrified before we started doing this together.  “That'll ruin your marriage, you'll never want to work together.” It works beautifully.

Lance Stitcher

For us, and we've developed our lanes that we kind of, sort of, stay mostly in.

Elaine Stitcher

I kick him every now and then to stay in his lane.

Lance Stitcher

If there's words involved, you're probably dealing with Elaine, and if there's numbers involved, you're probably dealing with Lance, so she knows not to use too many numbers, and I've been told not to use too many words, and then it all works really well.

Elaine Stitcher

Lance is not allowed to do an inspection, and he's also not allowed to accept a property without my eyes being laid on it first.

Lance Stitcher

I have learned my lessons.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, I worked with my husband, too, for 20 years in the business. And yes, we had one rule after the first five or six years, we had one rule that Phil does not talk to guests. That was it. If there's a guest with an issue, we're not going to have him telling them that they're a princess and don't forget your tiara on the way out.

Elaine Stitcher

Right. No, but, I mean, it works for us, and with the work hard, play hard theme, we try to have a lot of fun and we try to turn everything into an adventure; hence this trip. Everyone who knows me has heard me say before, traveling makes us better at what we do. So obviously we always stay in vacation rentals. But even on the trip here, it was a 17 hour ride with a two-year old boxer and a 26-foot boat in tow. So we did it over the course of two nights, and we stayed at two little hotels along the way, Mom and Pop places. Great experiences even though they were hotels, I left with certain feelings, that I knew I wanted to put forth in our business. If you're not getting out and traveling, you need to, because every home you stay at, every destination you visit, you will learn something that makes you better at what you do.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. Great words. So what's next? What's next for Seaside Vacations?

Lance Stitcher

Holy cow. Holy sheets. That's happening, right? The completion of the laundry is what's next for Seaside Vacations. Once that is 100% up and running, then we will just probably be working on perfecting our craft. There are other markets that are always of interest. If we get to the point where, if the team's got everything 100% locked down and I get bored, I'll probably look at another market.

Heather Bayer

Well, I saw that on a Facebook post this morning, I think. Something to do with the [Florida] Keys?

Elaine Stitcher

Yeah, but one can dream. Every time we visit someplace that we love, we get visions of that.

Lance Stitcher

We've had visions of buying a vacation home. We've had visions of expanding into other markets.

Elaine Stitcher

Whatever, anything is possible. The world is our oyster.

Heather Bayer

I love that. That's a great way of looking at it. I'm dropping this on you. But if you had one thing that you could share from your experience with other up and coming property managers, what would it be?

Lance Stitcher

Don't be afraid to ask questions of your peers. Find the guy who's done it and done it well for ten years or….. I'm sorry, find the lady who's done it and done it well for 15 years and strike up a conversation. I have found, gosh, I remember years ago of being scared to talk to people in this industry because they knew what they were doing and I didn't. But nobody went to school for this. And everybody, unless they are your competitor down the street, almost everybody is willing to share just about anything. I mean, all the way down to……people have shared contracts with us.

Elaine Stitcher

Build your vacation rental family, if you will. I mean, we have a core group of people that when we go to a conference, I feel like I'm visiting family and we're just so excited. And these are people who've riden out the years with us and that we can still turn to anytime, day or night. We need anything at all, they are there for us and we're more than happy to share our journey with anyone just getting started. And I would say listen to your gut, follow your instincts from the beginning. It took me some years to really learn that, sometimes the hard way and nine times out of ten you're gut feeling about a situation, whether it be a property or an owner or a guest, listen to that.  And build a team that you want to have dinner with. Build a team that you want to spend time with. Hire for fit and train the job. I mean, we've made only one or two bad hires over the years where we went for the skill, but the fit was a little ‘naagghh' and that when it comes back to trusting your gut feeling.

Elaine Stitcher

And we've learned to hire for our culture, for our office fit, and that's what's built this amazing family that is just absolutely invincible.  This group of people that have each other's back and our backs through thick or thin. They even take care of my dog. If you guys have not met my dog, she's very high maintenance. So just build a team you want to spend time with because you guys know, what we do is incredibly hard and it's draining. And if you don't do an occasional shot of tequila and share a few jokes with your team, you might not make it through it.

Lance Stitcher

Yeah, we're probably not going to have that anymore.

Elaine Stitcher

Do you know what I mean? We do it hard. You have to be able to lean on each other, laugh, cry, hug, whatever it takes. It's a hard business.

Lance Stitcher

It is a hard business, and I have to reinforce that 100% “hire for culture and then train for the job”. Personality testing tools make things a little bit easier nowadays. We've sent our entire team through the Better Talent profile machine and the results came back and we're like, yes, now I understand that. Yes, I most definitely knew that the whole time, but now I understand the whys.

Elaine Stitcher

Just make sure you have everyone in the right seat on the bus, as Lance likes to put it.

Lance Stitcher

I'm sure you're saying the same thing, that there are a ton of new people getting into the property management, vacation rental, short-term rental, call it what you want, but they're stepping into the game. Lots of startups, talking to vendor friends, vendors are dealing with lots of people that have one to three properties right now.

Elaine Stitcher

That's been crazy.

Lance Stitcher

We're watching some of our mentors either sell, retire or plan their succession plans right now, which almost puts us into the [mentor] roles. And I guess we're filling the shoes for some other people that are up and coming, which is exciting.

Elaine Stitcher

And you mentioned local.  Local is absolutely everything right now. I was telling our team just recently, being local is our superpower and that is what they want, they want to connect. We find that as we get to know our guests and we put really so much out there on social [media] about our team, about our dog, about our life. Be who you are and be true to who you are and don't try to be someone you're not, just because you think you want your business to look a certain way, because people will really connect with the fact that you are who you are and that you are human and that you are real. And we have people who come and stay with us and they're like old friends. They bring us…… just most recently a guest crocheted us this beautiful personalized blanket…… they want to connect with real people.

Lance Stitcher

Yes, when they bake you cookies and brownies and bring them to the office, A), they're delicious, but B), the first time that happened, that was really unexpected. You used your time, your precious time on vacation to bake for us. I mean, we didn't deserve that, but wow.

Elaine Stitcher

We have a repeat guest that has been with us since day one and she still stays with us. And every year we have a little running game where we each get each other something and she'll bring it to the office and I'll leave her something in the home that she rents and we try to outdo each other every year and it's become a lot of fun.

Lance Stitcher

Christmas in July or something, I don't know.

Elaine Stitcher

But someone once came to me when we were starting and they said, don't post about this on your social, don't post about Christmas, nothing with religion, nothing with this, that or the other thing. And I thought to myself, I am who I am. And if someone does not want to do business with us because of who we are, then I'm probably better off without that owner, without that guest. Just be who you are.

Heather Bayer

I think that is a perfect point to end on. “Be who you are”, and I love that. I've loved talking to you once again, as ever, this could go on, but we have to bring an end to it. And I just want to thank you so much for joining me again.

Elaine Stitcher

We still have not gotten to meet you in person. It was absolutely killing me. But we started this friendship during COVID and you have been just an amazing person to have in our lives and we're very thankful for you as well. We've learned so much from you.

Heather Bayer

Well, that is lovely. Thank you. And we will get together at some point in this year. There will be a conference somewhere. Thank you both so much.

Elaine Stitcher

All right, talk to you soon. Bye.

Heather Bayer

Thank you so much. Lance and Elaine Stitcher from Seaside Vacations of Chincoteague, Virginia and Ocean City, Maryland. An absolute pleasure to talk to people who have such a focus on quality and standards, which I believe is something that is spreading out through all parts of the industry now, and it's something to be absolutely welcomed. And I loved the conversation about community too, about being local and giving back and also the focus on staff and having the team as the priority in much of their daily working life.

Heather Bayer

So that's it for another week. I am always delighted to be with you. Look forward to being with you again next time.

Andrea Bayer

This episode was brought to you by OwnerRez. For more information about this internationally recognized leader in Vacation Rental software, click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device, or head over to www.vacationrentalformula.com/ownerrez to find out more.

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 www.vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.