1st of the month Bonus Episode: Mastering Operational Excellence for Exceptional Guest Experiences - with Stay Lake Norman COO, Caleb Hannon

Alex Husner  0:02  
Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real woman of vacation rentals. I'm Alex.

Annie Holcombe  0:06  
And I'm Annie.

Alex Husner  0:07  
We are joined today with Caleb Hannon, who is the COO of stay Lake Norman. Caleb, it's good to see you.

Caleb Hannon  0:13  
Yeah. So happy to finally connect with you guys.

Annie Holcombe  0:16  
We are honored to have you. We've been talking about you through other people for it feels like forever. And I know you from our membership committee for vrma. And I commented before we got on camera that I didn't recognize you without a hat. So it's nice to see your big smiling face. But before we get started, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you got into vacation rentals? Yeah, so

Caleb Hannon  0:35  
it's kind of non traditional from a lot of the stories you hear. You know, as a kid, I was blessed for having the opportunity to kind of move up and down the East Coast a lot, just from my family dynamics. And so I got to really experience working with all types of people meeting all types of people, which I think is really kind of set the tone for what I've done in my life. Shortly after college, I worked in marketing for an RV company then moved to Texas, and I did a stint there at a university where I taught a class but also ran the sports department for the intramural program, then after that moved back to North Carolina got into running the programming for a nonprofit retreat center. And then COVID had us make that decision, just shut down that nonprofit retreat center, and just got on Indeed, and had to find a job, I had to be able to support my family, we had a newborn at the time, and our teenage daughter at the time. And so I found an operations job, I was just an Operations Coordinator. I went and met with the GM at the time, as well as one of the owners. And it just felt like a really good fit for the time. And my first day of work, I threw on three or four podcast about the space and just dove in. And I just immediately fell in love. And since then, you know, I've been able to move up the ranks now to COO, I've been able to purchase a portion of the company. And all my wildest dreams are coming true.

Alex Husner  2:02  
Wow, what a great story. I'm sure there's a lot of trials and tribulations in the meantime, between all those years, though, it isn't an easy business. And certainly if you didn't really have, you know, experience on the hospitality side, probably a big learning curve when you got into this as you initially took the position. Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  2:18  
absolutely. You know, I've always been like a systems and processes type of person. But at the same time, like I have that creative in the back of my head, I always want to be creative for a little bit. And so I think that really lended a hand and being able to come up with ideas and ways to make people feel wanted, right. You know, we offer homes for people to stay, but at the same time, they want to feel like we want them here. And they want that and you know, coordinate that with, you know, my backstory of moving a lot when I was a kid, I always wanted to feel wanted where I was moving. So it just kind of all those pieces of my life just kind of work together to be perfectly situated to work. You know, with vacation properties,

Annie Holcombe  2:56  
I always say that people get into the business, and you either have this hospitality gene or you don't. And the ones that have the staying power are the ones that have the gene and they find the way to work with it. And so I think that you talked about that you touched on, you know, you were looking and wanting to feel wanted and needed and valued and like part of a community as you were growing up. So that's something that Alex and I both have found like within this industry, specifically, I've worked in hotels, but in vacation rentals is there's just something about the community that we work in. While it might be just your business in your town. It's just larger than that. And everybody is so gracious and welcoming. But what was it specifically? I think, like in the beginning, because if you had to dive in and learn things about it, what was it that initially just hooked you. So

Caleb Hannon  3:37  
I've always considered myself as a problem solver. It's always something that I really, really liked to in a respectful way, challenge the status quo and ask like, why are we doing it this way? And is there a better way to do it. And so when I came into the business, I was running operations, so I got to every day I got to come in, I got to see an issue. Because no matter what you say, there's always an issue every single day, there's some kind of new issue that you probably never thought would even happen every day I came to work, I got to think of a problem and I got to try to solve it. And some were big problems that took a while and others were like, Hey, we're doing X way can we just try it this way for a day and see what happens. And so that was the initial like, I really got to just use that part of me that's creative, but also the systems guy and be able to you know, just go in and and see what can be changed. If I asked you a question of why have we done this? And your answer is well, we've always done it that way. Let's really sit here and think about why have we always done it that way and what's changed in the past three years that makes us think that we should change it. And so I just I was able to just flourish in that environment. That's

Alex Husner  4:44  
so cool. I shared this before we hit play but hosted home down in Hilton had that I work with their owner had mentioned stay like Norman to me in several conversations because he's stayed with you on on many occasions and just you know raves about the experience that you create for your guests and now Only the experience, but just the true quality of the properties that you represent. But I'm curious, you know, as you guys have, you know, really carved out a pretty strong niche there. What is it? In your words that makes stay like Norman different than the competition that people are talking about you on the streets and a good way? Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  5:17  
well, it's an honor to hear that. And I have to say like, there's no one thing that I think I do, I'd like to give as much credit to the team as possible, because honestly, some of the jobs that we have are not fun, they're not glorious. And I've got people showing up to work every day with a smile on their face, just doing what needs to be done, I think we have beautiful properties. And that's just one part of it. Right? It's very easy to sell a really sexy home. I mean, that's why there's TV shows about it, right? HGTV exist, because people get to see ugly homes that turn into beautiful homes a lot of times, so you know that part of it is pretty easy. But taking that and also putting in the what if you saved up your entire last four years of income to be able to provide this for your family, or you and your friends are coming because someone is in chemo treatment. And this might be the last vacation that you have being able to not only provide this beautiful space for them to be able to enjoy connect with each other, but also being there as part of their family of saying, hey, I want to put you in the perfect home. So tell me what you need, and then finding the perfect home for him so that they're not stressed about what the bedroom layout is or anything like that. And then if they need to get in early, because their flight landed early, they call us and we're like, hey, not a problem, we'll get you in being able to connect with people and offer them a place where from start to finish, they can feel like they have someone to reach out to and talk to. That's what I want to provide

Annie Holcombe  6:46  
love that. So one of the things I think that I've heard about you and your company before is that you've got a pretty robust tech stack, you do a lot of things you talked about, you're kind of a tech guy. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you guys have in play? You know, what you're looking for? Are you doing anything in house is everything like a piecemeal? I think one of the things we talked about, and Lena Maldonado has come on a couple of times to talk about it's like a big Jenga puzzle, you know, trying to get all these things together. So everything works in sync. But what have you done that you found successful first day, like? Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  7:15  
I think one thing that I've always told our team is that we're gonna pay for the best. Like, if it costs more, we're gonna pay for it. Because if it's the best at what it does, then we're going to use it because it's going to make our lives easier on the back end, and it's going to cause you to work less. So then we'll just transfer, you know, that cost savings of labor to, you know, whatever the tech is. So, you know, obviously we have our PMS system and we use streamline for that. And then we use breezeway for our operations. And really we're why we got into breezeway was because we really took a strong focus on safety. And we market that to our guests. We talk about it all the time. And Justin Ford and I are really great friends talking about that community in the industry, you know, he and I visit each other's families. So you know, we got into safety, which then let us really see what breezeway could do for the operation side. So you know, we do that, then we ran into cleaning and what it was like to clean our properties. And there's so many different ways to do it, whether it be in house or 1099, or a combination of both. And so now we use Turbo. And a lot of people ask how do you use terminal in breezeway, and it's like, well, they do similar things, but they do very different things at the same time. And so we'd like that's a cost that we're going to have because we need them, we need them to help us manage our 1099 contracts. If we use I'm trying to think of everything we use, we use silicone travel to do all of our Wi Fi for us and collect all that information. We use point central for our locks, which they are so amazing. And they've just continued to elevate, we use Minute devices for our noise monitoring systems, again, really, when we take a look at what can we use in technology, we like to find the best in class. And like I said, if I have to pay for it, I'll pay for it, because they're the best at what they do for a reason. And so that's kind of the philosophy that we use with our technology. That's great.

Alex Husner  9:10  
I'm curious, too. On the marketing side, I know you've posted from some different photoshoots that you've done at the properties on LinkedIn. And clearly you put an emphasis on really being able to convey that experience in the marketing. But what does that look like for you in terms of bookings coming from Airbnb? VRBO the other channels versus direct?

Caleb Hannon  9:29  
Yeah, and that's a great question. So last year, we were right around 73 and a half percent direct bookings. And so you know, from the get go, and I can't take ownership over this, but from the get go, it was always, hey, we need to have a website. My business partner and the GM at the time they got connected with Matt Landau. They understood the niche. They understood how we need to have the direct booking and so from the start of it, you know, we've built that and now what we've really made an emphasis on the past kind of year and a half Two years my wife has since created her own content marketing company. So she does all of our social media and all of our content SEO for us. And really right now the game plan is to follow David and Gandhi's game plan of being the website for people to find anything else about Lake Norman. So if they want to find a waterfront restaurant, and they live locally, I still want them to come to my website. So just trying to always be front of mind in any capacity that has to do with Lake Norman, I think we've really been successful that we you know, we've doubled our organic traffic over the past few years and really just honing in on trying to be the one stop shop for like, norm. I

Alex Husner  10:38  
love that you're definitely speaking my language. And and that's great to see that you've leaned into those strategies, particularly the content strategy. And that's one thing that if you look at companies that they don't have a lot of direct bookings. And the question is, okay, well, do we invest in SEO? Do we invest in content? Do we invest in PPC and the whole marketing flywheel? That's the David angadi approach? And certainly what I've used in my experience, too, and you can't just do one thing, you have to really do them all. And you have to do them all? Well, in order to get to 73% direct bookings, sounds like you're firing on all cylinders, it's good to see. And actually even on the content side, you even have a podcast for like Norman to which is great. And any company, it's like, you have to think of yourself as a media company. And I know that sounds strange, but you need to be putting out content, you need to be serving content in the way that people listen, experience, see in different avenues. So that's really cool to seeing that you're taking that approach as well. Yeah, it's been

Caleb Hannon  11:31  
fun. Like I said, you know, earlier, I have that creative side of me, I have a minor in marketing. So that's always intrigued me is how do people get other people energized about what they're doing. And so we get to be creative. And the podcast, I was sitting behind my desk almost all day for about four weeks straight. And I was like, I've got to get out. And this was more of a personal thing for me. I was like, I need to be creative. And so I've always loved podcasts. And I said, why don't we just start one. And that was kind of the nature of the beast. So last year, we did 33 episodes, I will tell you that doing that for 33 weeks in a row is a lot more than my day to day. So this year, we're going to shorten it down, we're going to do eight or 10 weeks, and we're going to start just doing seasons of it. And I think one of the other benefits of that is you know, we get to connect with the local community and local business owners and to support them and push them to our guests, and make sure that they are seen and make sure that you know, at the same time we're seen by them. And by anybody who searches Lake Norman, on the internet,

Annie Holcombe  12:37  
it's great, because you're an advocate for your community, which is big. And given the way regulations are coming down on the industry, it's really important for you to be front and center and show that you're advocating not only just for your business, but for the entire community at large. And so I think you're taking the right approach of it. Have you noticed that it's helped you organically, I guess it's actually organically but by being involved in the community and doing this podcast, has it helped you get new owners on your plan, or at least the interest is there,

Caleb Hannon  13:07  
you know, with what we've built in the niche, we grow much slower than you know someone who's willing to take on whatever property is available. And there's nothing wrong with that growth strategy. It's just not our growth strategy. So we have continued to see more and more interest from individuals just tracking with our one our organic traffic coming on our website. But yes, we are starting to see some of that, you know, come from the community engagement of, hey, I know someone who has a lake house who's looking for someone great, get us in touch, it may not work out. But at least we're the forefront of anybody in the area who's thinking about it. And then if it's a property that just doesn't fit or it's an owner that doesn't fit, then we just kindly say hey, there's a few other companies that you might want to touch base with. But it's a long term approach. I mean, just like, you know, we talked about with PPC and SEO, it's a long term approach. And so I think we'll see even more fruit come down the line in the future. But right now it's slowly starting to turn over and and come through the door. Yeah, there's

Alex Husner  14:19  
a staggering statistic that it's somewhere around 35% and 40%, I believe of visitors that come to the Myrtle Beach area are coming to visit friends or family or someone they know that lives here, they might still be staying in accommodations, but they came because they're visiting someone here. And when we started really understanding that it's like you, you have to build those relationships with other companies within your own local market, because people are always going to ask their friends and family, you know, where should I stay? And it's like, that's definitely one of those efforts that you might not immediately see an impact from but it's certainly compounds over time and the more authority that you gain in that market and the more you know, just Help you're able to give to the community. It comes back full fold. Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  15:03  
absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Some of it's not financially motivated. Some of it is just it is my community and yeah, restaurant that I eat at every Wednesday with my strategic team. I want people to know how good it is. So I have no problem telling people how good it is. I want people to fall in love with what I've fallen in love with and why islands nice

Alex Husner  15:23  
to be loud and proud about where you live. I'm interested to and what you know, the typical vacation or looks like that is coming to Lake Norman. So like Norman is just right outside of Charlotte, a boating community? I do know that. But is it a lot of repeat guests that are coming year after year? And also, where are they mostly coming from the

Caleb Hannon  15:41  
year, so a huge drive to destination. And so actually, it's very strange for us to think about, but then it's not at same time when you think about is one of our largest drive to markets is Ohio and Pennsylvania in New York. And Ohio specifically is one of our largest outside of North Carolina areas that people drive to us, because it is a nine hour drive. And it's just on the brink of I can survive my family for nine hours to get. We get a lot of travelers from Florida, up and down the east coast from Miami, you know, ranging all the way up to New York. You know, we do get people from the west coast, but it is a much longer trip, a much more expensive trip for that. So the typical, what we call avatar that that we are marketing towards is parents, maybe they're retired and they live in Ohio. And they have a child in Florida that's married with children. They have a child in Texas that they haven't seen in a few years because it's been so far. And Uncle John who lives down the street, we have to invite Uncle John so he's going to come to and they're just all trying to find a centralized place that they can enjoy the water. And some of our homes have beaches on them so they can kind of get the love of the sand that they want just for a day because sands too much for me. And that's that's our typical avatar is, you know, generational families coming together, do we mark it to bachelorettes do we mark it to, you know, a group of guys trying to do a fantasy football draft, a corporate retreat? Absolutely, we do that. But if we're looking at our core audience, it's family that's spread out up and down the East Coast. And they all need a central place to come together to enjoy each other.

Annie Holcombe  17:25  
I know of a group of women that likes to travel and we did it back in the early part of this year and stayed over the Tennessee mountains. So I think North Carolina can on our radar for future. I wanted to ask you about actually your business. So like how many rental properties do you have? How much staff do you have? And you know, are you looking to expand outside of like doorman? And do you feel like like doorman is that's it for you guys, you want to own that market?

Caleb Hannon  17:51  
Yeah, that's a great question. And kind of perfect timing. Because me and my business partner just had a conversation about this. We're at 43 properties right now, you know, we have a trajectory of where we want to go. And we're going to get there. And then we're going to reevaluate and see what is left in the market? And what we do. Does it make sense to grow past that doesn't make sense to take our inventory, and you know, cut our bottom 10% and reinvest in another 10% above that, the answer right now on that is let's just get to the number that we want and see where we're at and see how happy we are. Because you know, when you hit growth numbers, you have to take into account as if right now we can hire one more person and go to 60 properties. But if we go to 65, we now have to invest in three more people. Well, does that growth makes sense? Because if that's the case, then we've got to go to ad to make it count type thing. So you know, we want to evaluate their staffing wise, we have about 15, full time staff. And people are probably like, whoa, 15, full time staff for 43 properties is insane. But we do have very large properties. And we do take that extra step to make sure that we're providing absolutely everything we can a lot of our owners are investors. So they don't want to have to think about their property, unless they're coming to stay at it, or they see a bad review. And then they might pop in and say something, but, you know, we want to take care of everything for them. So just like if they were to put their money in the stock market, they just get their check at the end of the day, and they're happy. And you know, they let us do what they pay us to do. So it takes a little bit more staff to do that. Luckily, we're in a position where we can as far as expanding outside of Lake Norman, my ego says yes, let's do. My personal life and the stresses of expanding aren't necessarily something we're looking at right now. And really right now the game plan is to continue to grow in the Lake Norman area with our homes, but then additional revenue sources and businesses that we can do that complement our homes, but all So complement the area as a whole. That makes

Alex Husner  20:03  
sense. Yeah, I think you've got to take a calculated approach to growth and a lot of companies, they, they get that initial success and they feel like they've got things, you know, systemized really quickly, and let's just jump into a new market. But we've talked to many people on the show about this, the nuances of these different markets are, you know, vast, I mean, Lake Norman versus Myrtle Beach or Panama City Beach for me is I mean, they're all very, very different markets. And I think at the end of the day, the, you know, the principles of how you run the business and the operations, those can go across markets, but really understanding and having the right team in place so that you're not having to go fly all over and, you know, spread yourself too thin, and then neglect the main business that you've built there so magnificently. That's important to remember. So I think you guys are taking the right approach there to grow what you have, as I'm sure there's still probably a lot more properties. I mean, if you did want to continue to grow past that at Markham. And how big is the market in like, Norman, for short term rentals? Yeah. So

Caleb Hannon  21:04  
you know, right now, there's really three players in our area, they manage approximately 200 properties. And that's us and to others, there's another smaller company in the area that they have about 15 homes in the area. And I think there's, there's a couple like booking type companies that are, you know, help market for the owner, but they do the majority of the work themselves. If we look at key data, key data says there's around 700 In our area, but we haven't been able to really narrow that down to Lake Front properties, that's a really tough statistic to be able to figure out. So you know, in reality, what we see as the potential market here, of what we would possibly be interested in is maybe 100 homes. But that's just that we have, there's well more out there that we could do, I would rather take my time, and invest in other opportunities to grow the community and service our homes, but also service the community as a whole. And find a way to make money out of that as well. While you know, keeping our niche in the property management side, I think it's

Annie Holcombe  22:11  
really important to understand and know where your lane is, so to speak, to find your place in the business because I know when I was in property management I worked for and was part of a company. And it was really because it was a lot of condo product like were Alex's, it was about volume. And there comes this point at which you start scaling above 500, getting close to 1000, that it just becomes a 24/7 365 day business and you don't get a break from it, you can't breathe and you can't step outside of it. And really assess like, Am I doing a good job because you're in it all day, every day. And it's really, really hard. And so I really liked the approach that you're taking in a lot of other businesses that we've talked to, in that it's not about having everything in the market, it's about having the stuff that you can service well, that you can rent that you can mark it that you're comfortable with, that you can take pride in. And that's really important because if you said that, you know, not every unit is right for your portfolio, just as the unit said, you know, are in your portfolio aren't right for others, because they just don't have the operational fortitude to do it. Because it's all you know, high end stuff is a lot harder. But I like that you've taken that approach. And I applaud that you said that your ego has one stance and kind of your view your the personal life has another stance because I think sometimes it's very easy to get lost in what the ego is driving, because it just seems like this is what's going to get me to the next level or wherever I think my you know, my future goals should be and sometimes that's it's hard to see the forest for the trees so to speak. It is

Caleb Hannon  23:39  
it is it took me a long time to understand, truly understand what a niche was, and understand the financial side of it understand the marketing side of it is something that until you're in it, it's hard to understand why would they do that? Why wouldn't they just take over the whole area or the whole industry? Right? So it's taken me, you know, it took me about a year and a half to truly understand. Why do we have the niche that we have? And why are we going to stay in that niche. And so it took a while some of my team, they're still learning that and the biggest step was to put my ego down and say, Hey, listen, like so what if someone has 100 properties? So what if someone has 1000 properties do what you do best. And then it doesn't matter what they have. All that matters is is what you see is success and what you're happy with. And if I if I can build that, then I'll be a happy person.

Alex Husner  24:32  
Well, I don't even I mean the amount of time and care that has to go into these large homes versus multiple condos in the same building. It's a very different type of operational business that way so I'm learning that the more that I've learned so my Hilton Head partner that it's just you know, the amount of people that it takes is significant and some things can be scaled a lot easier when you're working within a condo type of a business but scaling is different. In your neck of the woods, so does Fake, just

Caleb Hannon  25:00  
for you know, one example is that when you have larger homes, you often have even higher ceilings. So if a light bulb is burnt out in an area that has a 20 foot ceiling, like that takes about an hour and a half for to change one light bulb. It's just it's a whole new world that people think about just our preventative maintenance. You know, we do quarterly preventative maintenance at every property, we do two safety inspections a year, we do a home inspection every five years. And then we do a monthly safety inspection and preventive maintenance as well. And just that alone is like a full time job at all of our properties. And we only have 43.

Alex Husner  25:40  
Yeah. What about other things that you offer to guests? Do you do any sort of ancillary type services like boat rentals, or jet skis or anything in water sports or activities for the area? Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  25:50  
absolutely. And again, can't take credit for the idea. But I do manage it now. So I understand everything that goes into it. But we do have a boat rental company, we only rent boats to our guests. And we do move our boats around from dock to dock to be able to allow our guests to have that experience. So again, kind of going towards the you don't have to think about it idea, they can show up to the house, the boat will be at the dock ready for them. They call us they've watched the safety video, and we give them access to the keys. And then when they leave, they just leave the keys, they're on the boat. And we come by and we take care of everything else. So that's something that we do we have tons of partners in the area as well. We have equipment rental company partners, we have jet ski rental company partners, we do own 50% of a catering and private chef company in the area. So that is something that we do push, they will deliver and pre stock meals for your stay with beer and wine, they have their their license to do that. So you could show up to a house and there would be quiches in the fridge and muffins on the counter and a lasagna to put in the oven with heating instructions and a case of beer and a bottle of wine in the fridge for you. Those are the types of things that we want to add a boat on the dock. And again, you know, we have taken the step to try to find everything that you might want and then put it right in front of you and say this is who you need to talk to if you want this. And because everything is so specialized, we do push it to some of those vendors, if we don't control it, we push it to those vendors. Because, you know, if you have a gluten intolerance, I want you speaking to Chef Peter, so you know what we can control, we tried to find a way to make money out of it, what we can't control we push to the best in the area, so that they can help you get the best experience you want.

Alex Husner  27:35  
I think that it just it really solidifies the difference between booking with a professional host versus just an Airbnb as well. I mean, those relationships that you have, and knowing how to connect the dots into who the right vendor supplier is going to be for those guests that's going above and beyond. So there's a big difference there,

Caleb Hannon  27:53  
you will live in an area. So you know, if you Google something, you're probably if you Google best restaurant in the area, you might disagree with the top three that come without living there. You don't know that. And so, you know, that's, that's one thing that we get to deliver to our guests. And you know, the podcast helps that, which is why we started it, we do a discount card that we put on every single guest when they check in. So they get a little credit card size discount card to some of our favorite local restaurants. And the restaurants love it because it brings people in the door, and we don't charge them to do it. We just give it to our guests. So you know all those little things of just being able to be the expert in the area and help you guys when you show up next year because you're gonna stay, you're on vacation mind you just want to walk in and you're gonna see a card and it's gonna say, Ooh, this restaurant, okay, yep, that's where we're going. And you're gonna know it's good, because we offered it to you well,

Annie Holcombe  28:44  
and note to you, We like pizza and wine. So you're totally should be easy. It should be easy. I had a question. So you have an incredible business. And your focus is in all the right places that speak to me and Alex, you are thinking about your branding, you're thinking about the guest experience, you're thinking about ways to connect with your community. So you're touching all the things and I'm curious, I mentioned, you know, we sit on the membership committee for vrma. And that's one of the things is trying to get more people engaged in the industry. And it's grown so much specifically, since COVID. A lot of people come into it, what do you see is a way that we can bring more people to the fold, not necessarily just with vrma, but just in terms of connecting with each other and sharing learnings and educating these people that are newer in the business so that again, they're good stewards for their community and for the industry at large.

Caleb Hannon  29:37  
I think that we as a human race are relationship driven people and you know, whatever you believe in for an Uber, Bing or whatever. I'm personally a Christian, but you know, I believe that we were built to build relationships and whatever we do, and so, when I let's just you know, say go to A huge conference, I've taken some of my staff, right. And there's a lot of information that is presented there. And there is some great information that could change your company's structure, trajectory, whatever. At the same time, it's just this huge conglomerate of information and people, and it's just this huge wave of people walking down halls and sitting and, and if you're not confident, and who you are, what you're doing, or you have just just little, you know, ounce of you that says, maybe I shouldn't be here, then you're not going to build relationships with people, and you're not going to be able to learn because you're just going to sit back and be like, I'm just going to listen and watch. And that's it. And so like, I've learned from taking my team, to large conferences is that while they might get information out of it, when they come back, they're still overwhelmed. There'll be overwhelmed for a week, because it was just so much. And I've really enjoyed getting to know people on one on one levels, coming together with 1015 people, and us just building a relationship, but then also sharing, Hey, what are some things you're doing really well? And what are some things you're struggling with? And just talking about those in a really small community, I think that's why so many people go on to Facebook communities is because one, they don't have to stress about what someone's going to say, when they're right in front of them. They can, you know, take a little bit of that confidence if they're not like me, and just out there and whatever. And they can post something, and then they can wait for responses. But those people are searching relationships, and those people want to learn from people. And so I think as an industry, we have to do a better job of finding ways for people to connect in smaller groups and smaller cohorts to be able to learn from one another. Because there are people who run three, you know, short term rentals, vacation properties that I can learn something from, there are people who run 1000s, who could learn something from them, too. But everybody has to be able to see that at the same time. And the only way to see that, in my opinion, is to get people together in small groups. Let them connect as people then talk about their business. So well

Alex Husner  32:12  
said, totally agree on that, too. What are some examples? Or have you been to any conferences or cohorts that are smaller gatherings like that that have been successful for you?

Caleb Hannon  32:23  
Yeah. So the first one I went to was an Atlanta dolls retreat that he started putting on, I think that was a year and a half or two years ago, when he first started, I was able to attend that. And I met some really great people that I still talk to today. And I haven't seen him since. But we still talk. And then you know, Jody refresco invited me to a small cohort of people that live up and down the East Coast, and we connect every year and we meet at somebody's place. And we stay in their properties. And we meet at their home base, we see their operation, and then we just we share what we've done well over the past year and what we're struggling with. And there have been some grand takeaways from everybody. I mean, you just you just look around to 10 people, and you can see the response. And it's just like light bulbs like, oh, my gosh, that's great. Yes. And we all are very different. We don't compete with each other. We're all very different in what we do. But not only do we learn stuff about our business, but we also get to connect with people who are in a similar space as us and be able to be like, Oh, doesn't that just sometimes that just oh, that really. And you can, you know, sit there and connect with them. And it's just great.

Annie Holcombe  33:27  
I think it's also important, you touched on it about the fact that a small property group could learn from big just as much as a bigger learn from a small because I think part of the challenge that we have is a lot of the a lot of the content that is at some of these larger conferences is geared towards these large operators. It's not for how do you get in it? And how do you scale? And so there's been a lot of talk over the last couple of years, like, you know, should there be tracks at these conferences, so therefore, all of these people, but I think that having a diverse group of cohorts that are you know, from one to 1000 is really important, because it's sometimes, you know, we talked to people that they spend so much time like in their business and not on their business, that having somebody else can look at it from a different perspective. And you know, either they're just starting out, or that maybe they're running an urban environment versus a you know, traditional vacation, rental and beach or ski, you know, they they're just seeing things in a different mindset. And I think that that's really important. And I'm glad you touched on that, because I really feel that's an area of opportunity, not only the smaller groups of people, but just the smaller operators is bringing them into the fold, because I think they're able to be more innovative, they've come in sooner, and they're less likely to have that mindset of like, well, we've always done this and it works for us. You know, they don't know that yet. So they haven't had to worry about it, and they're more likely to share it. So I applaud you for that thinking. Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  34:46  
I mean, it's again, because of my background of growing up all over the place and having to meet new people. And when I was younger, I thought that was just the worst thing ever and I were so frustrated by it. But you know, hindsight is It truly allowed me to be able to understand that everybody comes from a different place and a different backstory and you just never know who they are. And you can't just count them out based off of one little faucet that you know about them. And so just being able to willing to learn from everybody, I think that's that's put me in a position where I am today.

Annie Holcombe  35:19  
It's a good mindset to be in. Before we get towards the end of this, I wanted to ask you beyond education and things, what do you think is something in the industry that we're not talking about enough right now?

Caleb Hannon  35:30  
Oh, that's that's a great one. I think, to me, one of the things that I I wouldn't necessarily say it's not talked about, because I do think it's presented on. My issue is I don't think it's actioned. I think that comes down to safety. I understand that from a large scale operation. If you've got 1000 units, the daunting task of coming in and thinking I'm going to do a safety inspection at every single one of these units every year, that would be very overwhelming. At the same time, I don't understand how it's not being done, people can get tired of Justin Ford being at every single conference and speaking at every single conference, but he's there for a reason. He shares information that is so necessary. And not only is it a peace of mind, for me, I can tell you firsthand that I did not go on a trip last year to a place that my family wanted to go on. Because I had such a hard time trying to find a place where I could ask them, does that bunk room have a window? And they wouldn't be able to answer me? And are there smoke detectors in every single room that has a bed? And they said no, I have two kids, I have a wife, I have a dog, like there's no way that I am putting them in a space that is unsafe. And I understand accidents happen. That's not what we're talking about actions do have people trip and fall all the time. But just the basic safety of knowing that your smoke detectors have batteries every six months, I really struggle with the idea that people say safety is important. But really, like you're not providing what you should be providing. And if I told you that you went to a hotel, and the smoke alarm was beeping, you'd probably be like, What, no way, it should be the same way at our properties across the entire nation. And it just it really frustrates me when I think about it,

Annie Holcombe  37:19  
it's a good thing to be frustrated about. I mean, it's sad that we have to be frustrated about it. But it's good to be frustrated, because it'll keep it front and center. Yeah,

Alex Husner  37:25  
it's a great thing that Justin Ford has kind of become the face of safety in our industry. And I think he does a great job. I mean, just being honest about it. Because you know, a lot of people a few years ago really didn't think about this and vacation rental companies. But you know, there's a scare tactic there. And unfortunately, you have to show things that happen that you're trying to prevent. But at the same time, it's like, you know, if that does prevent somebody else from from getting hurt, that's what has to be done. So I think you're right, it's not talked about enough, but love to see that you've embraced that and are able to make sure that your guests when they stay with you, their whole family knows that they're in a house that has everything that needs to be there to make sure that they're going to be okay.

Caleb Hannon  38:04  
Yeah, again, I want people to experience what I hope to experience. When I when I walk into a house with my kids, the last thing I want to be doing on my vacation is stressing about safety, and at the same time and just you know, 100% transparency, when when I wasn't in this space, I didn't think about it as a consumer, I did not think about it at whatsoever. And so I know for a fact that probably 90% of my guests are not thinking about it. So don't I even have a further responsibility to make sure that I do my job because I know that they don't even know what harm is in front of them. And so that's kind of the perspective that we take on it. Absolutely

Alex Husner  38:49  
great point and a great point to close with Caleb, you've brought just a lot of insight today and we appreciate you coming on this was a great conversation and look forward to having many more with you in the future as we continue to track your journey and your success but in the meantime, if any of our listeners want to reach out to you what's the best way for them to get in touch Yeah,

Caleb Hannon  39:09  
so not traditionally on LinkedIn like a lot of other people is to email me that's my to do list so kalo that stay like norman.com just email me if you love it, if you hate it, if you have a question, whatever. I will read it and it will come right to me and I will respond I promise.

Alex Husner  39:26  
Awesome. If anybody wants to get in touch with Andy and I you could go to Alex and Annie podcast.com And until next time, thank you for tuning in everybody