Heather Bayer

The family business of Mountain Laurel Chalets in Gatlinburg has been operating in the area for over 50 years. Working on a limited edition philosophy and stewarded by Tom Goodwin, the company has an enviable repeat market and takes over 80% of its bookings direct. Today, Tom joins me to share how Mountain Laurel Chalets stands out in the very competitive market. How a large percentage of his marketing budget is spent on the guest experience, and why you should always invest with excellence in mind.

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'm super delighted to be back with you once again. Well, we're having a heat wave. It's really glorious here in Ontario as I record this episode…. could change any minute, I suppose.

Heather Bayer

But having just got back from Barcelona and the trip to Europe, I've had a little bit of jet lag and that's lasted about five days. I've been getting up at about four o'clock in the morning, but really immersing myself in working on some new courses for the Vacation Rental Formula Business School that are going to be launched this summer. And what we're doing there is helping operators and small managers to grow their businesses by not making the same mistakes that I made.

Heather Bayer

So it's been super helpful that Brooke Pfautz of Vintory has been publishing lists that have been contributed by some of the best managers in this business on his LinkedIn page. And he was asking them, what are the 10 mistakes that you made while you've been a property manager? And I've absolutely been absorbed in these lists because they're just so valuable. And I've been talking about my mistakes, and I made a lot of them over the 20 years in this business. And now there is so much more material that's coming in from all these other managers. And the wisdom in these lists is immense. The honesty and transparency from the managers has been awe inspiring.  And Brooke is going to be compiling all these, separating them out into different buckets, different topics, and he'll be launching a book of them that you'll be able to get from Amazon. So watch out for that. I will, of course, be letting you know when that is available, but I believe you can pre- order it now. I'll put the information in the Show Notes.

Heather Bayer

When I started out in the business or started out as a property manager 20 years ago, there was absolutely no help from anyone, which is probably why many of us made these mistakes because many of these managers have been in business a long time. But I remember being met with this great wall of silence when I had a question and I tried to connect with other managers and it was just ‘crickets'. Nobody responded to me, nobody wanted to talk to me and I remember one manager saying, But what do you mean? You want me to share my secrets with you? This is what it was like 20 odd years ago that everybody had secrets and was thinking that they were doing it better than anybody else.  In fact, there are no secrets. We just, as managers have to, we create our own path. We learn from others and do the absolute best that we can. But we've got so much more knowledge available to us now because now the sharing is just completely awesome.

Heather Bayer

Tom Goodwin is one of those managers who shared his 10 mistakes on LinkedIn, and so many of those really resonated with me. So Mountain Laurel Chalets celebrated 50 years in business last year. Tom's joining me to talk about the history of the company, the values instilled by the founders, and how they've achieved some really amazing stats in repeat business and direct booking. He's going to talk about the limited edition philosophy that stands them apart from the competition. Of course, we'll be exploring some of the mistakes he made.

Heather Bayer

So, I'm delighted and honored to have with me today Tom Goodwin from Mountain Laurel Chalets. Welcome, Tom. Thank you so much for joining me.

Tom Goodwin

Thank you, Heather. It's certainly a real treat to be with you today.

Heather Bayer

Well, I've been doing a lot of research, as I always do, and came across podcasts and articles, and then of course, the list of your 10 mistakes that you contributed to Brooke Pfautz's LinkedIn post. He now has something like 700 or 800 of these… well, 70 or 80 lists, I think it is, which constitutes 700 to 800 mistakes. And it's a joy to read through them because as a property manager, and I'm sure you see this, it's always good to see that everybody else is going through exactly the same thing as you are.

Tom Goodwin

Yes, I think I've made all 700 mistakes.

Heather Bayer

Yes, me too. I read through those and you're nodding. Oh, gosh, yes.

Tom Goodwin

But it is so great that we're opening up and being vulnerable and sharing, as opposed to the facade and everything's perfect. But just to share the things we've learned that make us better.

Heather Bayer

Exactly. I said in the introduction to this episode that I loved the transparency and the rawness of some of these contributions. Your business has been going for 50 years plus…. I was in my business for 20 years and I remember way back at the beginning that nobody wanted to share a thing. Nobody.  You couldn't ask a question. You'd get this wall of silence. But now everybody is so open and transparent and it's great.

Heather Bayer

So, Tom, I'd like you to tell us a little bit about yourself and the business, because it has, with 50 years, it has such a rich and awesome history.

Tom Goodwin

Yes. I am so grateful that the way my life has been orchestrated and the woman I met and fell in love with, unbeknownst to me, was the daughter of some pioneers in the vacation rental industry. So Mount Laurel Chalets was started in 1972 in Gatlinburg. At that point, it was the third vacation rental business, now it is the oldest, the only remaining. And we are second generation and preparing for third generation. And everyone knows the statistics of success of second and third generations, and we're hoping to beat those odds. And that has been exciting to continue the 51-year history. But Mount Laurel Chalets began really out of a heart of hospitality and caring for others in the community. My mother-in-law, Dot Egli, and father-in-law, Ralph Egli, moved to Gatlinburg because they loved the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They got engaged on top of Mount LeConte. They were married and they had lived elsewhere in Tennessee and moved to Gatlinburg to start their family in 1958. Very exciting legacy. But by 1972, they were very entrenched in the community and hotels would sell out and there was no way to communicate to people that there were no rooms available.

Tom Goodwin

Wilma Maples, owner of the Gatlinburg Inn or the Mountain Inn, would call Susan's parents and say, Do you have a room available? Because we have a couple here, they have nowhere to stay. My wife and her sister would move out of their bedroom, which was two queen canopy beds with an attached bath and a sliding door to the deck. They would move out and they would provide that room and so they were a B&B before B&B existed, and they were just helping out the hotel owners. They were one of the first homes built up Ski Mountain Road in Wiley Oakley in Gatlinburg, if people are familiar with that area. They were not paved roads at that time, so they always had four-wheel drives. They lived there year round. Very few people lived year round. The other people that owned their own personal vacation homes would give their keys to my in-laws and say, Would you watch over my home in case a waterline breaks? Or check the home for security and safety. Then Dot and Ralph thought, Well, there's all these empty homes and there's people that need places to stay. So they started asking those homeowners if they would be interested in renting their homes while they weren't there.

Tom Goodwin

They purchased their first home and they called it Mountain Laurel House. Then that birthed the business. In 1972, the first rental was July 1 for $20 a night for a two-bedroom, and that began the journey. They continued to acquire other homes, built homes. A lot of those original homesteaders in the area would pass away and they would give a first right of refusal to my in-laws to purchase the home. So they began purchasing homes as well. I wish we could purchase those homes at that same price today. That was a great business strategy. Before you know it, by the 80s, they were advertising three times a year in Southern Living. That was the only advertising. And they were members of the local Chamber of Commerce, and they were doing very well and continued to do that. And then I got involved with the family when I met my wife in 1991. We married in '92. She said, Oh, by the way, we have some homes that are part of the family that we do in this business. So I got involved, just as a family member and a homeowner and an investor in the properties.

Tom Goodwin

Then by 2012, bringing this whole story together, how I got involved was that there was some difficulties in the management and the finances that my in-laws were not aware of through the [then] current management. We started asking questions and realized we needed to get involved in this. The family asked if I would serve for about six months as the general manager to straighten things out. It took 18 months to get us out of the wrong curve and towards a profit. In that period of time, I fell in love with the hospitality and the business and the people in the community. Now my wife and I, my in-laws had passed away in that time, the timing worked out really well for our family in the succession to second generation. We righted the ship, became profitable, and my wife and I are now the sole owners of the business. Family is still involved by owning several of the properties that we manage. Then we took a huge turn in 2016.  On November 27, the Gatlinburg wildfire came through, and in a matter of two hours, we lost half of our business, 48 of our properties, 9 of our personal homes.  That began a resetting and a re-establishing where we were going to go towards the future.

Heather Bayer

That is an amazing, fabulous story. What a legacy and then to come to the wildfire after you'd come so far and still go forward. It's interesting. I have Sharon Michie joining me in a few weeks to talk about the Hurricane [Ian] and her company, Cottages to Castles of Sanibel and Captiva, and I know she's going to tell this similar story about rising from the ashes, although slightly different from a hurricane. But yes, what a great story. But I want to ask you about the values that your in-laws instilled in you and the legacy of the company?

Tom Goodwin

Yeah, my in-laws were amazing people, really driven by their faith and driven by hospitality and caring for others. And so in 2012, when I took over the business, I thought, we have such an untapped story here that's not being told. So I hired a brand consulting company, and I had done branding work nationally before this, so this was right in my wheelhouse. And we invested a lot of money to capture what are the core values and rebranding, not really rebranding, fully branding the essence and the story of who we were. And in that process, we really did a deep dive of qualitative studies and quantitative studies and research and interviews. We distilled it to three core values that really have guided the company. They weren't new core values, we were just expressing what was already true. Those are the three things that we believe. So we believe that family matters. Secondly, we believe in exceeding expectations. And thirdly, we believe we are generous stewards. And the family matters really extends to not only our guests, that seems to be the most obvious one, but to our employees and our owners and our vendors and anyone else that we work with.  We want to have meaningful, honest, trusted, vulnerable, transparent relationships with those people as is appropriate.

Tom Goodwin

And so family drives us. In fact, our tagline is Mountain Laurel Chalets, where your family is our company. And that was derived, but my mother-in- law was the queen of hospitality. And whenever anyone came over, they felt like the most special company they ever had. Name tags, place cards at the dinner table, fresh flowers at the bedside, gifts waiting for them. We loved coming home to our mother-in-law's because we always got gifts. And it was really a sense of being a special company to them. That's what our guests had experienced and our owners had experienced. So we really created that family matters.

Tom Goodwin

Exceeding expectations is going above and beyond surprise and delight. And then the last one, being generous stewards, is that we want to care for our community, the environment, the resources that are entrusted to us by owners. These are many times their most valuable investment property or investment asset. We want them to have a great return. We want to steward that. We don't own these properties, but we want them to really produce great stewardship for them.

Tom Goodwin

There's also a sense of incredible generosity that my in-laws installed within each one of us to give to others, to give to worthy causes, to give back to the community. It is a little embarrassing how generous they were, but none of that ever really was wasted giving. It was an investment in other people's lives.

Heather Bayer

I want to step back a little bit to something you said before, just about the Gatlinburg fire. How did you recover? I know that could be the topic of an entirely separate podcast, but people will be thinking, Well, you lost nine of your own homes and it was devastating to the community. How do you come back from something like that?

Tom Goodwin

Well, I would say, Heather, our core values drove us in how we responded initially. It took a matter of days to find out what we had lost, even though  our office was still standing. And so about three days afterwards, we did see on the news that our office was there, but the eight acres all around our office were destroyed. The support walls, the railroad ties that backed up on the end of our property were burned through. The PVC pipes were melted on the side of our building, but our building survived. Our building is right at the entry point to the area where the most devastation was in the Chalet Village area. So we immediately responded by, How do we take care of people? How do we be a part of this community? We rallied with several churches and other individuals that made meals. We had water, we had equipment, supplies, we had bathrooms available to all the emergency responders, the National Guard that came in, all the utility people. We responded immediately with serving others. I think that was really instilled in our life as just essence of how do we respond?

Tom Goodwin

It continued on with…. we had I think it was 48 homes that we lost. These are owners that are devastated, their properties, what do we do, how do we handle insurance. We were really the forerunners for them. We handled all their excavation, we contracted out all of them, getting the house or the land and the plot ready, and we coached them through how to file for insurance and how to work in that. It was a hard recovery but in 2012, we were facing a very difficult financial time that no one really knew about. But the financial books were not in order when I took over and we were losing money. I knew what it was like to lose money and I knew what it was like to invest in the future. So in 2012, we took out loans and we were investing towards the future. And in 18 months, we became profitable. So we thought, okay, through the fires, we can press through this and we'll experience loss. But we hadn't spent all our money that we had earned from 2012 to 2016. And so we had money in the bank. We had the ability to move forward for 18 months. And we served our owners, not knowing if they would even come back to our program or rebuild, sell their lots.  Many of them sold their lots. We're done; this is too emotionally difficult for us. And now those are RBO homes and they're not on our program.

Tom Goodwin

But we did what we felt was right in serving others, exceeding their expectations, treating them like family and giving back to others. And it took about 18 months, again, to turn the business around and become profitable. But we had to scale down from 23 employees to 12 employees because when you have 120 homes or 100 homes, then you have 48 homes. There's a lot of operations that need to be taken care of in 48 homes doesn't cover that. So we really had to begin to build and to grow. But we found our real  niche and spot that at 60 homes, we're very profitable. And so that allows us to scale and grow. And we're up to 70 now. We want to move to 120. But we want to do that responsibly with the right amount of employees, the right amount of support, and the resources that we can keep, what we call our limited edition experience for our owners and our guests.

Heather Bayer

Let's go with that. Tell me more about ‘limited edition' because we've heard it from Matt Landau. He's been espousing limited edition for quite a number of years now. It's always wonderful to talk to operators and managers who apply this philosophy to their businesses. I'd love to hear how you do this and how it impacts on your guests and your owners.

Tom Goodwin

Yes, a huge shout out to Matt Landau for this. I remember sitting in a meeting and I guess it was the San Antonio VRMA Conference, and that was sharing about the four components of limited edition: family, local, specialized, surprise and delight, and then specialized. I thought, That's who we are. It was so nice that someone else had already identified the core of who we were. I latched onto this and I said, Matt, I want to grow in this. I want to champion this and champion others. I was so fortunate to become friends with Matt and to have those connections and to network and that happened at my first VRMA Conference in San Antonio, no better person than I could meet.

Tom Goodwin

When we had a way to identify what limited edition was and what we were, we just began to grow and to dig deep and to think, how can we improve? We are family-owned, we are local, and the areas that really energized me is the surprise and delight. And we're specialized just in the Smoky Mountain area. So the area to grow in was how do our guests come away with this sense of, I can't believe you did that, or you remembered, or that was so much so it's extra. With fast competition in the Smoky Mountains, 23,000 cabins and condos, not even including hotels. And we have 70. It was a small percentage, but we want all of our return and repeat guests to experience that limited edition experience, and our employees and our owners. So all these core values just don't apply to our one audience, but they apply to all of our audiences.

Heather Bayer

Couple of things I want to touch on there. One of them is the really impressive statistics that you have on repeat guests. And I want you to share that.

Tom Goodwin

Yes, we have around 50% of our guests are repeat guests. But I think the most exciting is that 20% of our revenue and our guests bookings come from people that have stayed with us five or more times. Five is a low watermark. There are people that stay with us 30, 40, 50 times in the 51-year history. They're bringing second generation, third generation, celebrating 30th, 40th anniversaries. They're what we call our family-first members. When you stay with us five or more times, which I think… I don't know that I've ever stayed at one other company or hotel, specific hotel… brand of hotel yes… but no vacation rental company, five or more times. But we have people coming back three and four times a year. Gatlinburg is a driveable location. It's very easy to get to and all seasons are beautiful and incredible. But we have a family-first program, which is our unique niche in a very competitive market. People decide, I won't rent with anyone else, because we have history and emotions come with that history and that experience that they tie to a brand and they tie to the people and everything about the company.  Our goal is to increase our family-first members and those that come five or more times.

Heather Bayer

Tell us about the surprise and delight, though. I want to hear how you surprise and delight, not just your… Well, yeah, all guests, but particularly your repeat guests and the family-first guests.

Tom Goodwin

Yes. Well, I just wanted to say that we have 2,300 members on the family-first program.

Heather Bayer

That's 2,300 who have stayed five or more times. That's amazing.

Tom Goodwin

Thank you Southern Living Advertising in the 1980s because that's when it started. You can't do that overnight. I have inherited an incredible legacy. For our guests, we find out why they're coming, what are they celebrating, and they love to tell us. Whether it's a fourth birthday or a 30th anniversary or a final hospice visit, we want to be involved and engaged with them. We use an app called BombBomb, and we do personalized video greetings for every guest before they come, welcoming them to their home, introducing us, how we can help them, calling them by name, and celebrating what occasion they're coming for. That goes out two or three days before they arrive. Then when they do arrive, if they're having a special occasion, we're making sure that the home is fitted with those elements. Our go to is is the Donut Friar. It's a 51-year company in Gatlinburg, best donuts in the world and I'm a donut aficionado! We do their homemade cinnamon bread and we place those in the homes with a personalized greeting. Now, if there's birthdays or anniversaries, we do balloons and banners and any extra elements for that.  Our family-first members all receive a gift as a part of coming. Those are our T-shirts that we have to keep redesigning and adding new ones because guests will say, Well, I have 20 T-shirts in my… they wear them all the time, but we always are looking for other ways to do surprise.

Heather Bayer

I think that is amazing.  I'm pulling something out of the Unlock Podcast where Matt was talking to you and I picked up that you spend 90% of your marketing budget on guest experience rather than on Google ads and Facebook ads and other spend that people would naturally assume would come out of the marketing budget.

Tom Goodwin

Yes. And that was right in the middle of COVID when we were over-extended with stays and we didn't have to invest all the money in the Google ads. I would say it's about 70%/30% now, and well worth it. And we haven't decreased the amount that we do for the guest. We just increased what we're doing in our SEO and so forth because obviously, the market has changed since 2020 and 2021. But a lot of those gifts and the personalization, we feel like it's worth the 10, 20, 30, 50 dollars a visit to personalize that for the guest.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I love that. The whole idea of knowing your guest, and it's not difficult, is it? Just asking some questions. Years ago at a VRMA Conference, the headliner, the keynote speaker was John DiJulius, and his book The Customer Service Revolution, has been… I mean, it's on my bookcase. I dip into it every other day. It's tagged and covered with notes. But he talks about exactly that, getting to know your guests. And he talks ‘FORD', which is family, occupation, what they do for relaxation and their desires and dreams. And he says if you can find out those things about your guests, then they will become customers for life.

Tom Goodwin

And they want to tell you, everyone likes talking about themselves, right? So I've been talking most of this podcast, we all enjoy talking about our story and sharing it. And how do you bring that out of guests? And in this highly technology driven hospitality industry, we want to use technology, but we cannot lose the human touch and the humanity that comes with being known. Part of that is people's names, using their names and identifying them. Something we're trying and exploring to do and took this from  Unreasonable Hospitality [by Will Guidara], another great hospitality book. But Google searching the guests as they come to know what they look like. So when they come in the office, you're anticipating them. We do a Christmas card exchange. My wife came up with this idea. Everyone sends family pictures in their Christmas cards. So we asked all of our family-first and all of our followers on Facebook and our guests to send us their family photo, our family Christmas card, holiday card. And we drew one and gave them a free two-nights stay. So we received over 200 photos of our guests families. And we scanned those. And we're going to be adding them to their contact form through our reservation.

Tom Goodwin

So there's just a lot of ways that you can do that. We're creating a cookbook. So all of our owners are creating their favorite recipes and their memories of their homes. And we're asking our guests to do a cookbook. And we'll be publishing that this summer. But just ways to personalize and bring it down to a family sharing level that people would experience.

Heather Bayer

So we've been talking a fair bit about guests and experiences for guests, but I want to move on to owners, because owners, obviously, are the lifeblood of our business. And one thing that I have noticed, particularly loved, that you get your owners together and you entertain them, you educate them, but they are part of your family as well.

Tom Goodwin

Yes. This is something my in-laws started over 40 years ago. We're uniquely located in the Chalet Village area. That's where the 80% of 90% of our homes are located. Historically, it's the oldest vacation rental part of Gatlinburg. So that neighborhood association has an annual meeting that people come to the last Saturday of April. My in-laws thought, Well, people are coming in for Saturday. What are they doing Friday night? Let's have them for dinner. They would have a dinner and a meeting and just go over… I went to several of those before I started running the business. What do we do with Firewood? What about door keys? How do we keep trash? Just basic questions that people would have. Now, because of technology, we send out every two weeks a thing called The Living Room to our owners, which gives them updates on all of our technology, advancements, improvements, questions and concerns that they would have. Our owners are getting a touchpoint with us every two weeks.

Heather Bayer

How do you do that, Tom? Is it just a written piece?

Tom Goodwin

No. Our marketing director, Jordan Watts, takes all the data and the information and the content and creates it through a Canva video. Very simple, easy to use. So it's written out words and we insert videos into that. We insert a lot of content so it makes it fresh and exciting for our owners. But I realized that I'm not communicating with my owners enough. We're being reactive as opposed to proactive. This is a proactive way every two weeks, not overwhelming, five minutes, a five minute video that has content and a personal greeting from me in one of their homes or an explanation of our rent management or house cleaning, celebrating one of our owners or celebrating one of our employees. It just keeps it really familiar. But our annual meetings, then, we've really pivoted and changed it to more of a celebration time. We call it ‘A Night on Ski Mountain', and we've had it last Friday of April this year. I decided, well, let's just do a mini-conference or gathering and help educate our owners and also open this to invite all the owners in the area. There's about, right in our central area, of I think 1,500 homes.

Tom Goodwin

We sent out a Facebook post, we sent out personal postcards inviting owners, and we had 140 people come to our Night on Ski Mountain. We hosted it in the newly-refurbished Ober Mountain Ski Lodge. Fabulous new ownership of a 50-year-old family company. They allowed us to host it up there. The President/CEO of Ober Mountain came, as well as the Mayor of Gatlinburg came to greet us. David Angotti was our keynote speaker from StaySense to share about trends. Our number one concern our owners were having, Why're our bookings down? Why is the percentage lower than it was in the last two years? We know all those answers, but to help our owners and to educate them. So David did a great job. Travis Wilburn with the 100 Collection came because we're members of the 100 Collection. Trey Campbell with Xplorie came, because we use Xplorie as well. We had a comedian to end the night. During the business portion, we brought the kids to the other side of the lounge, had games and coloring books and things for the kids to do. But the comedian was family-friendly, of course, because we're a family-friendly business.  He finished out the night. We also had a prodigy Banjo player from Dollywood come and entertain us as well. It was an exciting night.

Tom Goodwin

We had 140 people, 60 of those were our owners that came. We'd usually have those 60 owners at round tables and have a meal and then share information. But we also had about 50 potential owners come. Residents of the community, people doing it themselves, maybe with other companies. What's going on with Mountain Laurel? And they were intrigued by the content of what we were sharing. And then we also had our cleaners come, all of our employees, so they got to meet them, and then the VIPs. So I think it's unusual. Most people think, Oh, I would never want my owners all to be in the same room, because they would talk to each other. I thought, well, then maybe you need to check your core values. I don't know, I just think it's so natural to have all of our owners together. We have a great retention of our owners. I know some other companies think of a 25 % attrition. We don't lose our owners. And I think we've lost, in my 12 years leading the company, apart from people selling their homes and leaving, that's an obvious loss that you can anticipate, but I think we've had two homeowners, that were related, that were just disgruntled with our program and everyone else has stayed.

Tom Goodwin

We're not many, but we don't need a lot to do that. 23,000 cabins. I don't want to have 500 homes. I want to go to sleep at night and be profitable in my business, provide the legacy for people. I think that smaller niche of our initial goal is thinking, let's get back up to 120 and see if we can still maintain this limited edition experience for our guests and our owners.

Heather Bayer

I love that idea of getting them together, but also to invite, and this is one I haven't heard before, open it out to other owners because that's just a great business move.

Tom Goodwin

Yes, I followed up with every one of those owners, and there's 40 contacts that I have. The Sunday after the meeting, I met with a couple with three homes that wants to come on our program. So in the process of transitioning those three homes, several others that are just intrigued were watching you, were interested, and I'm going to keep those relationships open. So I think this was a great investment, not only for our owners, but for just serving the community and helping the RBOs. Because if someone is running by themselves and doing it from a distance and the guest has a poor experience, that impacts all of us..

Tom Goodwin

And you see all of that on Facebook, and I think we're going to be facing a time coming up quickly that those RBOs that thought during COVID it's a great experience are thinking, this is too much work. It is a lot of work. But to have the systems in place and to be available to catch some of that, the fruit dropping from the trees, we want to be available and hopefully grow to that 120 within the next few years.

Heather Bayer

That is just brilliant. I love that. I hope that people listening are taking this on board. I mean, if I was still involved with my company, that is something that I would start to consider. Our business was similar in terms of values. In 20 years, we rarely lost an owner except for sale of the property or they're moving back into it. And we did try on occasions to get them together. Ours were a little different. They were a bit more widely spaced out. But we started a Facebook group for our owners. So here's your own Facebook group. Go say hello to each other and we will just pop in occasionally. And it never really got as off the ground as I would have liked it to. But I think if I was back there again, I'd probably be nurturing that because I think they do. It's a bit like managers getting together and networking. I think owners are more comfortable now with networking with each other.

Tom Goodwin

There's great synergy that comes with that. We have owners that have been with us for four years that sat with two couples that were not owners, and they were doing the same.  Also in this meeting, we give out awards for best social media presence from our owners' most approved cabins, certificates for however they're doing remodeling, or adding. We celebrate the improvements and hopefully that will be contagious. We have a memorial award in honor of my in-laws for the one owner that lives up to our core values. It's a real coveted special award. It's a tear-jerker, really. When these people realize I'm involved in something that's bigger than myself and it's a real special thing.

Heather Bayer

This is such a great conversation. I know it could go on and on, but I need to go back to these list of 10 mistakes. Your list of 10 mistakes, I will include your list, if that's okay with you, on the Show Notes so people can check those out. But the one that I wanted to focus on, because we're touching on something we haven't talked about yet, and that's really your technology. And it was definitely one of my mistakes that I didn't word mine as elegantly as you did. I think I said we just spent too much on the cheaper stuff and didn't look at excellence in the future. But you said, I sometimes misunderstood the value of investing with excellence in mind. I was always looking for a bargain because I went, yes, that's exactly what I was doing. You get what you pay for. I'm learning more and more that spending resources on competent staff, helpful tools, and quality services pays off in the long run. Have you got an example of a time when you actually did that? You cut costs and realized later it just wasn't the best economic decision you could have made?

Tom Goodwin

Yes. I am not a big car guy. We provide our vehicles for all of our inspectors and our maintenance. We were doing auction trucks that, Wow, we got it for $1500, or, We got it for $3,500. It was great. We were always having extra expenses and time and being pulled away. And so two years in, maybe it was three years in, we just bought a new fleet of Jeeps and we put them on lease or payments and just took the expense. And then we never had car issues. Our employees felt like, Wow, I'm driving a great vehicle. It's reliable, it's branded. And that was a very small thing. There are other elements, too, that I try to help our owners realize. You can scrimp and you can buy your window treatments at the local box store, or you can get something that's… Spend your money specifically. And decor is huge. It's really important. And I've tried to decorate, scrimped and all the thrift stores and everything that I would go to as opposed to hiring someone that is excellent with that.

Tom Goodwin

It's interesting. The homes that we spent the money on for professional design were all selected by the 100 Collection.  And two others that an owner was very gifted in that as well. So it pays to invest more.

Tom Goodwin

We built our own website. I didn't know that website companies existed because I wasn't involved in the conference world and the networking because, as you said earlier, we didn't share our secrets. We didn't share information. Our competition was the enemy. And we were the experts and we knew more than they did or they were stealing from us. So there's a very, I call a scarcity mentality and I needed to replace that with an abundance mentality. There's plenty of room. There's plenty of space for others to succeed. There are 23,000 rental opportunities in the Smoky Mountains. There are probably 300 management companies and another 1,000 upstarts of RBOs in our community. There's plenty of room and we can share all of our best resources and tools. Back to the question of… I tried to scrimp on the branding, and then I hired a marketing company and it was expensive when we weren't making any money. We invested $50,000 in the research and the rebranding or the rebirth of who we were as a company and it's paid itself off in spades.

Tom Goodwin

Beautiful imagery, marketing, all the elements, the colors, the tone, the feel, the voice, all of those things coming from experts and really capturing the essence of who we were was well worth that. There's plenty of other examples of, Oh, let's just hire the cheapest entry-level employee. And what do you get? The cheapest entry-level employee. So especially in this market, we're trying to be much more generous and competitive with our compensation with our employees as well.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I think it's so worthwhile just really thinking five years ahead with every purchase. What's this going to look like in five years' time? Are we going to need to replace it? Probably, if you buy the cheapest, it's going to have to be replaced, or even three years or two years time.

Tom Goodwin

Yes, and we have to replace all of our Jeeps now. So I was like, Okay, let's go do that. Of course, I'd love Land Rovers or something like that, but that's not reasonable.

Heather Bayer

So you've mentioned that you are a relatively new conference goer. You didn't go in the past.  It was interesting because I've been going to VRMAs for many, many years and I missed you. I would love to have met you years ago. But what changed your mind about attending?

Tom Goodwin

Well, we were involved in the Tennessee Hospitality Association and the local lodging association, but I didn't realize there was this larger network. I just was unaware. And Amy Hinote brought VRM Intel to Gatlinburg, and I thought, well, I have no excuse. I'm going to go to the convention center (200 people), and see what this is about. I was like, You are kidding me? This is amazing. Met some vendors that we're now working with for our website and our PMS, and met some other local owners. I thought, I've missed out. Then we joined VRMA, met Matt Landau, met Steve Schwab, met Brooke Pfautz, went to smaller retreats, Keystone Retreat, and it has paid off in spades. It's amazing the networking. What you said, I think we're in a new era of abundance as opposed to scarcity. We want to be a blessing to other people. We want to share our best practices. Like Brooke says, our mistakes are so vulnerable. I think it's a beautiful thing of what is happening within our industry. It's a sense of community and it's an extension of our heart for hospitality, caring for other people. Honestly, before it was ‘competition was the threat', or we never shared our best practices.

Tom Goodwin

I'm not there completely within our community. There are not other players that are coming to the table. I'm really good friends with Lauren Madewell of Auntie Bellem's Cabins, and we share our best practices and ideas and network, and I want her to succeed. When a home that we visit is not really right for our program and it's right for them, so I'm going to refer them to champion them. It's because they are local, they are family-owned, they've been in business over 25 years. I am skeptical of a lot of the RBOs, and I think I need to…  David Angotti wrote on his ten mistakes, should have befriended more RBOs than the individual, and he regretted not doing that. When he did, it was great. So part of that was our first step this year in inviting other owners to our program and beginning relationships with them.

Heather Bayer

I know up in Ontario when… As I say, when I started out back in 2002, 2003, and nobody talked to anybody, and we started the Ontario Cottage Rental Managers' Association around 2016, I think. And it just blew us all away that we could actually get together around the table. We could have a few drinks, we could have a meal, and we could share all the things that we all had in common. And I think every one of us said that was so great because we'd been sitting there thinking, I wonder if anybody else is experiencing the same thing. And then finding that, yes, of course. And we'd get together in a September, October after a busy summer, and we'd have a wild bitching session for an hour and then get down to say, okay, what can we do about some of these things that are happening with guests coming in and owners not complying with standards? And we just piled in with collective wisdom, and it was game changing. And now I'm out of it. I'm seeing how this association is continuing to grow, and it's wonderful. I love to see it. That's great.

Tom Goodwin

And I regret the years that I've missed out, but I'm trying to make up for it. The other element that is great, all of your podcasts are online, and I've gone back and gone through the history, and some are dated and were relevant to that time period. But I have learned so much from your podcast, from other leaders in the industry podcasts.  DiJulius' podcast on hospitality is great. I have a lot of drive time and I'm always listening and learning from some great people.

Heather Bayer

Well, that's a great segue into your last comment on your list, which said, I've dreamed of starting a podcast, which I wish I'd started one five years ago. I still haven't done it. Ask me again in a year. Well, I'm asking you again in two months since you wrote that. What would your podcast be about?

Tom Goodwin

Well, I do wish I'd started five years ago, or you started how long ago? Eight years ago? .

Heather Bayer

Thirteen years ago.

Tom Goodwin

Thirteen! My goodness. So you've stepped into something that… You have that legacy. It's hard to catch up on that. I think we probably don't need another vacation rental podcast. There's so much content that's out there. But I have thought there is nothing really specifically towards my market, towards Gatlinburg. And there are loyal followers, and I thought there are stories in Gatlinburg that need to be told about the history of the town. And I want to focus on the limited edition businesses that are family-owned, local specialized and offer that. So it expands beyond hospitality. But really, every business in Gatlinburg is a hospitality business. So I think there are stories to be told. And I think it would be interesting to do that just on the Gatlinburg market.

Heather Bayer

I believe Caleb Hannon at Stay Lake Norman has started one, but very similar. The travel business is so under-served in podcasting that I did a presentation at VRMA a few years ago saying, Start a podcast. We all should be starting podcasts in our areas telling those local stories because… And I think, yeah, I'll be following you now, Tom, and pushing you if you need any help.

Tom Goodwin

I'm accountable. Okay, thank you. Amber Hurdle said, I'll help you. Matt said, I'll help you. And I don't have an excuse, but I realized it's a lot of work. It's like an RBO saying, Oh, I'll just manage a few vacation homes. No problem. I'll just start a podcast. No problem. No, it's consistency and the drive and the discipline to do that can't be underestimated. So hats off to you for 13 incredible years.

Heather Bayer

Well, thank you.  I was in Barcelona last week at the Short Stay Week, and I was interviewed by Paul Stevens from Short Term Rentalz, which is the magazine, great magazine, online magazine for industry news. I've got all this fancy equipment, he just had his iPhone with a tiny little microphone attached to it. And I was blown away with how simple it is just to go out, whip out the iPhone and start interviewing somebody. And you can do that. Just go and interview all your local businesses.

Tom Goodwin

Yeah, I could interview our owners in their homes. Yes. What is your story? Why did you invest here?

Heather Bayer

Well, you see, this is now going out to the thousand odd people who are going to download this within the first 10 hours of it being published.

Tom Goodwin

How much time do I have?

Heather Bayer

So you're going to need to follow up… I will follow up with you.

Heather Bayer

Tom, it's been absolutely fantastic speaking to you. I've had such fun on this. I will look forward to seeing you, perhaps not in Orlando. I believe you have a special event coming up that might have you missing that?

Tom Goodwin

Yes, my second grandchild is due October 21st, so can't miss that for sure.

Heather Bayer

Absolutely.  Might you be in Nashville for the DARM conference in December?

Tom Goodwin

I am excited to hear that that is being started up again and Amy Hinote, so I think there's a strong possibility.

Heather Bayer

Okay, well, I hope I get to meet you then. If not, maybe at another event next year.

Tom Goodwin

Dinner on me for sure. I have been smiling through this entire podcast. It is such a joy to be with you and you're a champion for everything that we stand for in the industry. That's not to be underestimated, the influence that you have. I thank you for that and such a privilege to have this time with you.

Heather Bayer

The privilege is mine, Tom. Thank you so much and we shall meet soon.

Heather Bayer

Absolutely.

Heather Bayer

What a great conversation that was. I always love talking to property managers. It's an honor, it's a pleasure to spend time with these just ultimate professionals who have so much hospitality in their blood. And I'm interested that Tom's new grandchild will be born in October. And is that yet another potential manager for the future and taking the legacy of Mountain Laurel Chalets even further forward? I won't be around to see that, but that's quite an interesting thing to think about for me anyway.

Heather Bayer

So there were so many takeaways from that conversation. Of course, when you go to the Show Notes, you get the entire transcription of the podcast. I used to write long, long Show Notes and try to fit as much in as I could about what was in the episode. But now you can just… I'll highlight the main points, but you can go to the transcript and read it through to capture anything that you may have missed, or if you're reading it, you'd like to underline or highlight or whatever. And of course, there will be links in there to the things that we mentioned on the episode, as well as a copy of Tom's Ten Mistakes.

Heather Bayer

I'm not sure mistakes is the best word. I think these are 10 gems, 10 gems of wisdom that 70 or 80 property managers have forwarded to Brooke to include in his book, because they are all amazing gems of wisdom. Look for that to be coming out. As I said at the beginning, I believe there is a pre-order and I'll make sure that's in the Show Notes too.

Heather Bayer

So that's it from me for another week. I came back from Barcelona so fired up, so motivated because I spoke to so many amazing people while I was there. So many of them are going to be coming on the show over the next weeks and months. We are coming up on our 500th episode, which will be broadcast on the 28th of June. And I'm not saying right now who's going to be on the show, but it's going to be a very interesting discussion. So make sure you watch out for that one or listen out for that one as it were. So I hope you go on and have a great rest of your day or evening, and I will be with you again next week.

Heather Bayer

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