Creating Modern Clarity with Stoic Wisdom, with Andrew McConnell

Welcome to Alex and Annie, The Real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we are joined today with Andrew McConnell, who is the founder and CEO of rented and also the author of the brand new best selling book, get out of my head. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm just happy. I have a name that starts with A so that I can be invited here

to the A team

it's a very select few that get to join us.

Yes. I think when we were when we were scheduling your episode, we kept going back and forth because I there's other people named Andrew, no big surprise, but forgetting I'm like, gosh, I thought we had already recorded with him. I'm like, That's Andrew McConnell.But now we're super excited to have you here today. And it's almost hard to determine where we want to start. Because there's so much with you with rented and what you've built there in the company. We just got back from the Data and Revenue Management Conference,which, of course is very relevant to what you have. But I want to make sure we get some time talking about your book because I as I mentioned before we we hit record, I took a lot of notes. And there's a lot of things I just really connected with. So before we get started,that's just a little prelude to get everybody excited for what's to come. But can you give our audience just a little bit of background on who you are and what your involvement in vacation rentals is, been?

Yeah, so my I'm the Co-Founder, CEO Rented,and I've been in this short term rental industry for 10 years ago. I went back to in 2012.Some family friends were talking about VRBO over lunch, and I didn't know what it was. I said,What's this VBRO? Oh, and they said no, no, no. VRBO vacation rent by owner. It's this great site where we rent out our homes and we make all this money. Man,that sounds amazing. You just put this picture on the internet and you start making money. But you live in Atlanta and your place is in Florida and you live in Boston, your places in Vermont. How how do you get guests in? Oh, well, I have a local person that helps get that. And how do you get it clean? Oh, I have a separate local person to do that. And how do they book? Well, I talked to everybody who tries to book and I kept asking questions. Wait,it doesn't sound as easy as putting something on the internet. Yeah, like, Wait,sounds like you're doing a lot of work? Yeah. And you said,Well, yeah, you know, I spent eight to 10 hours a week doing this. So eight to 10 hours a week. You're a cardiologist,you're a dentist, you're billing$500 $600 an hour? Yeah. You don't mow your own lawn, you don't change your own oil. Why in the world? Are you doing this? You're telling me they're not people who do this for a living? Oh, yeah, there are. And you think you do a better job than them? Oh, no, no, that like, it's a full time job.They're much better. Why are you not working with these people?So well, because they want I think they charge too much.

Funny coming from doctors,

too, if they don't have any skin in the game,because it's on commission. I just don't trust that they really care as much as I do. And I said, Okay, well, but they don't have jobs without homes.So why wouldn't the homeowners all get together and say,managers, if you want my home,you have to bid against each other to tell me exactly what you're going to give me. So yeah, tell me if there's a way to do that everybody would be everybody is this a big market.And I started reaching out searching and it was very big,and it was getting bigger. And this new company, Airbnb was just starting to take off. And so I quit my job 10 months later, or 11 months later, and started a company vacation futures, which was a marketplace that connected homeowners with professional managers, because I really believe very strongly.Doctors, lawyers, these people that we're not doing this for a living should not be doing it.And it should be these professionals and the best professionals should get the most homes. And so that was the first marketplace. And it started off and took off very,very quickly. And then it kind of plateaued. Why? Why is it plateauing, every homeowner says they want this, you know, if any manager is willing to tell them what they're gonna get their five times more likely to sign up with that manager. And found it was because there are only a handful of companies that could actually provide guarantees,right? If you're only in Hilton Head, it's very risky to do a guarantee if you have a bad hurricane season or if you're in the Gulf, and there's an oil spill, or if you're anywhere in the world and COVID hits, it's a very risky business to be in.And so we were kind of capped on how many managers could participate in that. So then that led to the next business,which was rented capital, which was a product where we would work with local managers to go provide those guarantee to homeowners. So we'd say hey,we're going to work with you.We're going to hire you on a commission and share more of the upside with you local manager,but as another tool in your belt. In your tool belt, you can go say hey, homeowner, I manage on a 30% commission or if you want, I'll pay you $3,500 a month for the next three years and I get the exclusive right to manage his home. And so we ended up getting 1000s of properties all over the world doing that we had properties in Asia and Africa, South America all over the US. And Cliff, you know, the co founder of Vacasa ended up joining and helping building that. And he said, you know,with all of these properties, we should probably do more on pricing and revenue management.Say, Well, no, I like let the local managers do that. He said,Well, no, look, the people who are the best at gas experience and really care about that property care, they don't always put a ton of time into pricing and revenue management, I think there's a big opportunity there if we started doing that. And I thought maybe we'd make five or6% more. And we ended up starting building out the team and the tools. And we started making 30 to 100%. More, we were doubling the revenue on the same properties with the same managers. So inevitably, the the managers we worked with said,Wait, can you do this for my other homes? He said, Well,yeah, but you'd need to pay us because this, like we're doing these for hours, because we make the money on it. But right, then we decided to make that its own business. So in 2020, right, as a pandemic setting we spun rented.com out has its own company, and the software we had built for our team, because we had used all the other pricing tools. And our team said, Hey,this one is good, except for these things. And this one's good except for these things.And so we said, Okay, well, what if we just go build one that's good for all the things that you need. And so that's what we built as part of our automated rate tool. And so rented really is the pricing engine for professional managers, we manage1000s and 1000s of properties on behalf of hundreds and hundreds of property managers with our in house team. And then we have the technology that they use that we make available to anybody who says, I don't want to hire a revenue manager, I want to do it myself, but I want the best technology. And so that's art,or automated retool, or we have our full service revenue management offering. So that was a very long winded answer.

But very concise.But I was kind of wondering how you were going to put all that together in a semi quick explanation. Because there's there's just been so much history that you've, you've been through in those 10 years and reading the book, it was it was interesting to hear it back in a different lens of like, not only what was going on, but then Yeah, are you reflecting on it?You know, looking back, it's super interesting. And, and I remember a lot of the different phases. You know, I remember a condo world receiving your postcards, you guys did a ton of direct mail back in the day. And I remember our owner even looking at and saying how in the world? Are they going to do this? How are they going to guarantee this revenue? And I think we had that conversation with you at res fest or one of the early versions that we went to, and heard more about and how okay, like that's yeah, that makes that make sense. But I didn't realize though, that so when you were doing revenue management, you were doing that just for obviously the homes that you brought to the to the company. So I mean, you're you were still you took the original plan of futures,

it was future stays, vacation, future,Vacation Futures

the original premise of that to connect to the property managers to the homes. But so you were doing it.So on an individual basis that you were having homeowners come to you ask you which company that they ought to work with.And you would determine how would you how would you determine in the market? Who would you refer them to?

Yeah, so we did both. One, if a homeowner came to us, we would do our diligence in that market of okay, from the data that we have who's performing the best? Yes,a lot were on guest reviews,hence where the revenue performance wasn't always where we might have wanted or expected. So it was it was very much from a guest perspective of are these the best homes because we thought for the homeowner for the guests, that's going to be the best answer. We were underwrited based on what is the potential rental income. And it was when we said hey, I think we can capture more this potential rental income that we started taking that revenue management on ourselves to capture that value.

So does that so would you have to do in that scenario? Did you have to like do projections every single year to get that underwriting for the next year? Or is it just a few?How does that work out?

Yeah, so it depended how long we were signing the contract. So if we did a 12 month contract, and it was up for renewal, we would reproject based on all the data we had, then there were times that based on a current projection, we could lock in a three year contract because locked in a longer term contract. So it just depended on each contract, which ended up getting a lot of contract management. I

was gonna say that yeah, a lot. Yeah, that's more than an algorithm to manage that.

I'm sure yeah,it was not a pure software business.

Yeah, I was gonna say. So you, obviously you found that your true strength and all of that is not only in connecting the dots, but in connecting the dots to revenue.And how you now do that for companies, you know, across the globe, essentially. What what do you see as the future of the end So much has changed just even in the last couple of years. But what are your projections for revenue management within vacation rentals?

Yeah, I think a few things are one, I think we're going to start getting better data. Across the board.It was interesting to hear all the pricing players out there saying, Yeah, I just wish we had better data. And kind of looking over at Expedia, looking at OTAs and OTAs. And okay, I think maybe this is something we should look into, how can we create better industry sharing,to get more clarity here,because we'll make more money,if there's better pricing and more guests are booking and all these things. So I think that's going to be a big trend. And what we're able to do, I think,also, it if we go back to this being the fourth data and revenue management conference,and that that wasn't really something that was highly talked about, there's a reason we took it on, because it wasn't a discipline, a lot of managers had their you kind of set your price in October, November, when you sign your contract for the next year with the homeowner.And it didn't really matter what the trends in the market were,what demand was or how supply fluctuated. So we've gotten further on people recognizing the importance of pricing, I think the next wave is really people understanding the importance and the discipline of revenue management. Because that is different. It's it is a much bigger topic and bigger asking workload than just the price,the price is just a number. But revenue management comes in to the strategy, how your marketing, where your marketing,when your marketing, how you what you make available when you make available, there's just a lot more that goes into it. And right now, because it's easier to just look at a number, most of revenue management has been focused on price. But I think that's this very tiny window into this much wider discipline that really has a ton of potential ahead of it.

Yeah, we've talked, we talked to a lot of people and I think coming from so I started out in hotels, but moved over to vacation rentals,and then OTA and then now channel management, but having been kind of full circle. And looking at where we were, as property managers, 10 years ago,we were self reporting to some of these systems to say, here's what our ADR is, so you're kind of looking at backwards data,you weren't actually able to look at anything true going forward. But decisions were based on just you know, I called around, and this is what the competitors are doing. And they were still doing rudimentary shops. And now to be able to have that raw data like right in front of you to be able to make decisions is really great. But then you have to layer in from a vacation rental side, it's not as simple as hotels, it's all the fees that we have in play.It's the different types of units that you have within your portfolio, its length of stay restriction, I mean, there's so many variables within vacation rentals that it makes the revenue management aspect of the industry so complex, that I don't think anybody's quite figured it out. But I think what's great about yourself and all the other tools that are out there is like, now we actually have real time data, we can look forward, we can look back, or we can look at things that are going on true in the market where we weren't able to do that even you know, five, six years ago to the degree that we can now so there is a lot of opportunity there. And I think you know, what you guys are doing it Rented through ART and through your team is you're really trying to identify those pockets of opportunity and, and help people understand where they can where they can take the rubber revenue management aspect of their business if they didn't know they should.

Yeah, I mean,it's a good point and talking,comparing it to hotels of if you think back to say Africa, and phones, and how long is it going to take to go get phone lines set to get? But Africa just LeapFrog. They just skipped the whole Hey, we need landlines and went straight to cell phones.And then everybody has a cell phone. So everybody got online and went straight to almost smartphones. Right. And so

I didn't know that.

It's the concept is leapfrogging on advancements and so this is an opportunity where we can leapfrog. Yeah, I love the evolutionary path of hotels were right. If you look at hotels,they're kind of four big brands that dominate Marriott, Hyatt Hilton. But and IHG the reason for that was hotels and the consolidation existed pre internet, sort of get that concept of a quality standard and all of that you needed this flag behind it. And I think that that was the pitch of hey, this is the same thing is going to happen in vacation rentals and I I wrote a whole three part series back in 2015 of this is the path that vacation rentals are going to follow. And I think what I missed and we were all missing was maybe the internet ended up making vacation rentals leapfrog that yeah, because of online review If I can get that trust because of online photos,I can get that trust and that credibility without needing a big brand behind it. The brand is less relevant than what 150other guests said about the place and these photos that are these real or not. Right. And so I think the same comes when you talk about revenue management of do we need back reporting data?Or because we're all online? Can we see real time search patterns? Can we see real time click through rates and sorting patterns and all that and getting access to that kind of data just completely transforms what the discipline of revenue management can and should be? I mean, it's

like night and day to compare where we are right now compared to 2015. Or anywhere anytime before that, I would say, I mean, and I honestly, you have to admit that COVID had a lot to do with that in terms of the new money and investment and just knowledge that was coming into this space to really transform our technology. And it just it always seemed like, back in the day, we were so far behind hotels, I mean, we were there was nothing that was as up to date with what they were doing.And now, like you said, I mean,that's a perfect way to describe it, we have leapfrogged our deficiencies that we went so far ahead, because there was so much just just interest in bringing technology to the space that for a long time was categorized as mom and pop. And now we are actually further ahead and a lot of ways in our technology than the hotels are. So it's interesting to see how things evolve. I don't know that any of us could have totally predicted where we are right now.

Yeah, if you did, then kudos and

Terry Whyte,maybe the one person that probably identified it before anybody else, but yeah. From Rented? What do you guys work with hotels at all? Like independent hotels? Or?

Yeah, more boutique? Hotel? So if you're treating it more like, more like a vacation rental, so not not a big flag hotel? But yeah,boutique hotels and things?Yeah, we do.

So you've grown rented? How many employees do you have?

We're still at20. I mean, we tried to stay very efficient

lean, but a powerhouse within the industry,for sure. And so to kind of transition over to the book a little bit, I know, when we had our pre call, you had told us that you have always had interest in writing a book. And I think your first book you sent to one of your friends, and he said, Don't ever write a book again.

He was a little kinder, maybe you were,you were someone who can do good things. This is not this is not it. This book is not where you need to spend your time.

So fast forward from those days, which that was what probably 15 years ago or so.

It was kind of2010 2011 timeframe.

So you got you got the bug back in your head to get out of your head and then write this incredible book about stoicism and comparing your own life experiences to the Stoics,which is something that I've always been very interested in and more recently, just, I'm big Ryan Holiday fan. And I know you've referenced them quite a bit in the book. But tell us about what made you decide to write this book.

I mean, we talked about COVID once already,but maybe more than one sorry.It was it really was when it first hit great. And you think about what life was like and kind of the headspace you're in and March of 2020. In this conversation with the friend from college who said and with where financial markets are,we're gonna have a generation of perpetual renters, these people that are stuck financially,where they're never going to be able to build the means to own their own property, right. I'm working in an industry where the people I serve are owning multiple properties. But there's this whole group of people that we're never going to have that opportunity to even have one their own home. And that that phrase perpetual renters generation perpetual renters really kind of sat with me and didn't sit well. And then I think because that that phrase was around, I looked at what was happening, right, like the presidential cycle, the looking at case rates, everything, man,we actually, it's not just about a generation, it's not some specific age group. It's everybody that I see. And including myself at times. We're living our lives as renters of our mind. And you know, this idea from stoicism we were perpetual renters, but of our mind. And if you go to stoicism,and kind of Epictetus and these others have, there's only one thing you can actually own. And COVID was showing us our body we can fully fully On, like a virus, bacteria, anything can come get you

and your body changes.

Over time,somebody's gonna change physical possessions. They break, they get old, you could be a billionaire, and government gets mad and they start confiscating things from you, right, your physical possessions you can't guarantee on which your mind is that one thing, and that we spend all our time focused on exercise or whatever. Yeah, all the exterior things we never actually own at the cost and the detriment of the one thing we do. And we end up giving it away. Just absolutely giving it away. And just running back the pieces that are left. I said,Well, that's that's actually the bigger tragedy. And having studied a lot of stoicism and Taoism, and Buddhism was like,you know, there's, there's something here that I found personally helpful, right to have these different exercises and things that I do to try to address when I am able to notice what's going on. Can I share that with others? And in doing it? Can I use this as a great platform to go talk to some really interesting people who are also doing some of these things and share their stories?So that's, that's where the book came from.

Yeah, that's,

it's just I mean, it's just amazing. And like I said, I, you know, I jumped I'm not finished with the book yet. So no spoilers. But you said, there's no spoilers.So I think it's, I think what I found, like an in the very beginning, and I can talk to you about this initially was, the one thing that leapt out at me was in, I think it was, it was the very beginning it was your dad said something to you when you were little. And it was basically like, just don't you know, don't spend all the time thinking about the things that you should be doing. Right?Yeah. Don't do them. But don't spend time on things outside of your control. Yeah. And I think that, you know, people always talk about, you know, who is it that's living in your head, it's those people that the monkey on your back, that the voices in your head, all those things that are, they're taking you down,and you just you've laid this out in such a way that it just kind of, I kind of like was reading through chapters, and I was like, God, how have I been letting this happen to me for so long? Like, I've just been letting myself get in my own way, because of all these thoughts. And so I think you,you did such a good job in using examples and laying it out in a in a way that people can take all this advice and these learnings in tangible bites, and be able to affect change. And I love the little work, the little workbooks that at the end of each chapter that was really smart. So how did you come to that kind of that layout of your book that you wanted to share at the end of every chapter like things that people could take from the book and work on? Is that stuff that you were already doing yourself? Or you learned along the way? While writing it?

Yeah. So just to rewind a little bit on the the recognition and realizing like, Man, I'm doing this of it is? So far, it's been universal,right? There's nobody that kind of hears these concepts like,oh, yeah, no, that didn't apply to me. I'm yeah,

they're lying if they are.

And so I think it was understanding the biology of, oh, this is just a human trait, like this is how our brains work. And they're kind of working against our needs in terms of mental health and mind ownership because of how we've evolved. And so when it comes to books like this, there, no shortage of books. I don't think that don't have good ideas, and tell good stories and get them all out there. But so much of it, it's you read this book, and that that's really interesting.That's great. And then you put it down, you go to the next book, right? And the only you know, this actually, one of the chapters action is the only thing, right? Just the feeling you get are the words on the page in the book or the audio.It doesn't matter if you don't do something with it.Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where I do put these exercises that like, there, I do the zero based calendaring, I do the refuse. Because my life doesn't change and get better unless I'm doing something with these lessons. And I wanted to share those with other people as well of, hey, if this does resonate with you, and you do want to change it, what does that actually look like? Instead of just a single illustration of this one person that this one thing? What is something that I could actually go and implement in my own life? And that's where really having tools at your disposal was important to me and developing but

yeah, I think we're all bombarded with information these days. And like you said,there's no shortage of books or information that you can find to you know, just increase the power of your understanding of a topic or whatever it is personal development, but I do think you know, I'm not one typically when I read books, I don't always do like the worksheets and stuff like that. I just for some reason, I never do them. I probably but I really just try and think about more how what has been said, is relatable to my current situation or a situation that has recently happened. And there were so many in your book that I related to.But I think just one of the ones I highlighted that was one of my favorites was just the importance of really valuing our time. And you talked about the importance of valuing your time as an entrepreneur. And one of the stories you mentioned was you had this report that you had been asking your team, like, we want to do it as long as you and everybody kept saying, yeah,we'll do it. And nobody did it.And so finally, you said, I'm gonna do it myself. And you did it over Memorial Day weekend,and, and you said, but I wasn't happy I didn't, I took time away from my family that I need to do it that weekend. No. But that kind of taught you or that made you reflect on, let's figure out the things that only you can do.And that's something that personally, I'm trying to really focus on too. Because I know I'm definitely somebody that I'm,I'm an only child, I'm, I'm good. I'm good working in teams,but I'm also really good just working on my own and knowing that I can get things done. But what that does lead to is trying to do everything yourself. And so really trying to figure out what is best best case or best use of time for anything that you're working on. I think that's really where all of us have the ability to grow and be able to get more done looking at it that way.

And it can change with time, right? This this concept, I don't even think it's in the book. But I go back to a lot. Is this two by two matrix of what am I not good at?And what am I great at? Yeah,and kind of the spectrum? And then what do I hate doing? Or what do I love doing? Yeah,yeah. And that can change over time. But the more of my day,and the more of my life, I can spend in the top rate, things I'm really good at that I enjoy.The happier I am, right, the more effective I am. And as long as other things are getting done, especially if there's things I'm not good at, and they're getting done by people that are better than me at those things. Yeah, then the better the company is, the better. Any of it is. Yeah. And so it's really trying to use that lens,and not as a one off. Because we change, we've learned new things. And we can get better.

Yeah, I always think of my father was a policeman growing up in, in Washington, DC and at the time,not to I mean, that anybody wants to brag about it was when DC was known as the murder capital of the world. So it was really a bad time to be a police officer. And he had been he had he really honed his skill in crime scene. And so he was doing a lot of work with FBI and CIA.And he would and really just would take classes is like a voracious reader. And people would always say, Well, why are you going for like the next level? Why don't you want to be a chief of police arena? Why are you trying to go to that, and he would always say, put it in these terms. And he'd say, you know, there, there are enough chiefs, but not enough Indians.And I'm really happy just being an Indian, there's things that I like to do at my Indian level,that are just the skills that I have, and the skills that I like, and I just like to be there. And some people are naturally driven to be higher,but they're not necessarily happier. It's just kind of like,are you You know, you find have to find that balance. And what do you like to do? Again, to your point, what do you like to do? And what are you driven to do and find the balance of it.And he never, he was never miserable in that role, he really liked the fact that he can learn more and do more. And so funny enough, when he retired, he moved back to Florida where we are now. And they didn't have a crime scene unit at the police force where he in a town he grew up. So they asked him to start that. So he got to use all of those skills that were deemed, you know, kind of high level, if you will, in the police force, and kind of come in and be like a leader,where he had never thought that was a role that he wanted. But he'd honed all these skills. And so he was still getting to do what he was passionate about.And I think it's just what you just said about over time, what you do and what you love sort of changes as to how you maybe use that skill and, and work with that skill sets. That's a really good thing for people to understand and recognize.

And I mean,your father's example, the default is to always want to go to that next level, right? Like,that seems to be the thing we want, because it's the next thing the next

just posted. Yeah,yeah, but but

that's, that's my question is, why are we supposed to do it? And very rarely do people ask, what do they actually want? And then the next level question that's, I think, even more important is Why do you want that? Yeah,yeah, exactly. I want that because society says I should want the next thing. Right.Okay. Yeah. But do you also want to be fulfilled? Yeah, there are other things you might want and are they your real desires as opposed to one's kind of incepted by your parents told you to want certain things.

I feel pressure has played such a big role and I think people's drive and determination it maybe gets them off the path that They initially intended or probably should be on.

Yeah. And I think I mean being fulfilled is and getting to that point in your career in your life where you're looking at things from that lens of what is going to fulfill me not what is just going to fill my cup or what is going to get me to that next level that really changes how how you make decisions. And I know this past year for sure, I've really leaned into that. And I think it's helped me quite a bit. But one of the things that you always talk about is detaching from results, which that's another great concept too. And something that's very hard to do. But, I mean, I see that a lot, and myself and other people that it is, it's a tough thing to do. I mean, you're you're working so hard, but you're,you're working for that outcome.But tell us a little bit about that concept. I think that's it's a really powerful one that you explained in the book.

Yeah. This this is another one that I would say stoicism doesn't have a monopoly on the wisdom in it right, like stoics title, but because Ryan Holiday sells a lot of books that ya know, ism has the same concept, Buddhism, same concept, a lot of their parts of prayer and Judeo Christian thinking that varies. Yeah, for sure, you know, non attachment to the results. And there are so many different reasons for it.But back to that fulfilled one just because of hedonic adaptation, right hit if all we care about is, we'll be happy when we get this result. Then winning and getting that result.The reality is, you're going to just go back to your normal level once,

right? That is not never going to be fulfilling when you get there.

Because you're just gonna see the next thing,right? Yeah, the guy that all man I'll have it when I get a Lamborghini, and it gets them seasonable gaudy. And doesn't stick Yeah. And so that's one reason. And if you can focus on the process, instead, that's the ongoing thing, if you can enjoy what you're doing. Instead, say,oh, in 20 years, when I get x, I will be happy, say, what is the process that I can spend the next 20 years doing to be happy today for all those 20. Because that thing is probably not going to be the thing that makes me happy. There's a whole separate part on what we control. And what we don't free, we do not control the result, the default answer or the the easy kind of case to understand is in sports,where you have two separate teams have both can control the training, they do both can control the nutrition they have how much sleep they get the getting the right equipment, all that, but neither can control the result, because they're playing against each other. And if the only thing they can take away or care about is the result, then one of them and 50%of the time, they're going to be dissatisfied. And they may take the wrong lessons. Right. They could have done terrible preparation and terrible plan.But the other team, you know,somebody gets the flu. And they end up being able to win and say, Okay, this is great. Like we're, we're totally set for the next time we play. They took the wrong lesson from that. And so really making sure in focusing on the process, you're focusing on what you can control and focusing on what you can influence. It's just back to that fulfillment back to that fulfilled life. Right, a much better position.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah,one of the lines, or one of the concepts y'all talked about is that you talked about Seneca and he says that you suffer more in your mind than in reality, but you it's, you'd need to play out the worst case scenarios like you talk about that, too. So I guess my question was, I mean,you suffer more in your mind the reality, but you talked about playing out worst case scenarios. How do those two go together? Because I feel like it's a little bit. It's a little bit counterintuitive. How you talked about that?

Yeah. So I'll take each in turn, because that is one that certainly seems like Wait, how do you? Yeah. The idea of suffering more than imagination and reality and suffering more than once is,there's something that's going to happen, or we think might happen in a week or two weeks,or a year or two years. And we're suffering at before this thing ever happens where so angst ridden so concerned with looking at case rates or what the war whatever it is, and then the thing happens, and we suffer through that. And then thing has happened, and we look back and like oh, that was so terrible,and thinking and still giving our mind back to this thing from the past. And Senecas point is before it and after it. What Why are you suffering? Like, yeah,all the time. That's the only time there should be if there's going to have to be suffering,it should only be in that moment, right, the dread before and the concern after, so you can kind of get that. Why would I extend and prolong but how do you tie that to playing out the worst case? to preparing now,suffering is different than preparing just because you're imagining, Hey, what is the worst thing that could happen?Doesn't mean you have to suffer.You say, Okay, I can't control that. But back to focusing not on the results. But the process.But I can focus on is what can I do now? To make that less painful to make that less likely? What are the things I can put in place? What are the pieces of work, I could do ahead of time to make this you know,go from a 90% chance of occurring to a 10% chance to go from a 10 on a 10 point scale of pain to a two on a 10 point scale of pain. And so the the idea of not suffering isn't to necessarily like be an ostrich or put your head head in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen is saying, Hey, don't just sit there and suffering do so I can think about.

Yeah. more proactive

hurricane preparation.

Yeah, exactly.Exactly. You're sitting there

saying that. And I and I, and I think like So ever since. So we had a hurricane here 2018 hurricane Michael. And it was it was horrible. And I've been through several before, and nothing had been bad. And it always been like, Oh, everybody panic. And so I was sort of complacent. And then this one happened and it was bad. And so every storm after that, because I was here for it. Every storm is like dread now. And even though I know I can prepare for it, it's that? Will it be the same mental, you know, I think it's in your mind. But to your point,it's like, I know that there are things that I can do to mitigate some of the the awfulness of it,there's gonna be things I can't control. And I won't know until they happen, and you have to just kind of embrace it. But I think that that's like, for me,that's an easy way to break it down is like, you know, it's coming, you're gonna have to deal with it, what are the things that you can do right now to be prepared for the worst that you know, could happen?

I think I mean, the main thing is, it's just taking action, even if it's mentally taking action in your mind of like, taking, you know,assessment of what could potentially happen and what you can do. I mean, sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's just thinking through things, but that at least it puts you on the right path of you have that fulfillment of knowing that you have a little bit more control.And ultimately, I think that's where all of us, you know, we feel better when we're in control. But when you are just worrying about something or just playing out the anxiety in your mind, you have no control at that point. So putting action into how you think about these things, is key.

And it becomes personalized. I mean, far less extreme than a hurricane. I think back when I was a consultant, and you have minimum, two flights every week,right? Like going to the client coming back. And you had these consultants said, hey, if I'm not missing at least five flights a year, I get to the airport too early. I want the minimum amount of time at the airport, cetera, et cetera. And but mine is the exact opposite of like, does it hurt me to be an hour early? And yeah, work done at the airport? Yeah. For me, that wasn't the answer. My preparation wasn't, hey, I'm going to prepare mentally to say, Hey, I'm just going to miss some flights this year. Because I'd rather prepare to say, I'm always going to be there on time. Yeah, I know. I'm getting home that day. I have more of that. Yeah. But there wasn't a it's not a peanut butter answer.Right. It's different for different people. And back to really thinking through the question and answers for yourself are important.

Yeah, absolutely.So do this book. And where are you going to go with it in the future? Do you talk to your team about these types of learnings and and just theories? Or, you know, how does this work into your daily life?

Yeah, it's the I think there's some very specific examples in the book of bringing up of okay, you know,what, what influences what's going to happen while catering,and what the government does and what travelers are like, okay,great. What are those things do we control? We don't control any of that. Okay, well, then let's stop spinning our conversations.Let's stop spinning our mind on that level. What do we control?Oh, well, how we serve clients.Great. Let's go put our mind there. The calendaring thing?Definitely work with the team on that. And this idea of zero based calendaring.

Can you explain that a little bit confused about that one?

So it's so much of our calendars,especially now that we have a book on my account normally links, right? Yeah, literally,on our time, and then we like look at the day and say, Okay,what time do I still have?Because exactly as other people,and the idea of zero days countering say, Hey, wait for that and say if I was going to design the ideal day, week,month, what would that look like? How much of my time would I be doing creative work? How much of that time would I be interfacing directly with clients, whether it's in person or on Zoom? How much time would I be researching and learning how much time would I be with my direct reports and other team members are going through and really designing that out and then saying, okay, is is that100%? work there? Is that 120%work day? If it's 120%? What,what needs to give? How is everything loses 20%? Or is it?This is a hard and fast I needed definitely this much time with clients, I'm not going to give on that. And so these other pieces have to go. And then proactively, once you have that mapped out, looking ahead at your calendar, and saying, Okay,did I actually hit here to this or not? And there's things with Calendly, that you can have different kinds of links. So if you say, I'm only going to make myself available for 60 minutes a week, to non clients, and non team members, that they can book with me, then you can have a Calendly link that is literally just 60 minutes on Thursday from two to three o'clock Eastern.Anybody asked me for time say yeah, this is the Calendly link.And if there's not time until December, yeah, that's, that's,

that happens. Yeah,yeah.

And then there's a separate link of hey,for my team, here's open time,that is always going to be for them. And so you can use technology for that worry, you can just proactively manage your calendar to that. And if it gets out of whack, you go and look and say, Hey, unfortunately,some stuff came up, I'm gonna have to move this back two weeks. But it's just like, the zero based comes from instead of looking at what our calendar is,and trying to tweak on the edges is saying, if I didn't have anything on, and I was designing from the ground up, what would I want? Yeah, yeah. Because if you don't design your life, you're gonna end up with something that a bunch of other people didn't design. Yeah. Because they're not thinking about you. They're thinking about them.

Yeah, that's true.

That's, yeah, we,we learned, I don't know, if you're gonna tell the story. We know. We learned very quickly when we started the podcast that we needed to do that. And so we use Calendly. And actually, it works great. But we at first, we just made it so we had our shared calendars between the two of us and just let people pick whatever times they wanted to come on for their pre call and their interview. And it was just all over the place. And so we,towards the beginning of this year said, Okay, we're gonna block off which days we want to do recordings, and which days when one or two pre calls, I think that's allowed us to really get it under control a lot more. Because in our regular businesses, we both have tons of meetings too. So it's, it can add up but taking control that definitely helps. So I totally recommend that and Calendly to anybody who's listening.

Absolutely. Well Andrew? So I think one of the things I actually learned as he was kind of like, moving from the book, like what is the next phase for Rented and look like?Are you are you going to write another book, but how you implemented all of these great things from your book at Rented and what the outcome was? Or are you guys what's the future look like for Rented?

Yeah, I would,I would separate out rented from the bought, you know, this was kind of a passion project grew out of my role there. But for rented, it's, it has been from all the businesses really serving the local property manager. And there was the stat when I first came into the industry in 2012. That really stuck out to me. And it was, at that time, there were 6 billion available hotels bed night. And there were estimated unused vacation rentals, second home investment property, equivalents of 7.2 billion, we had more than existed with hotels. And so we didn't have to go build all these hotels, we didn't need all this construction, all this new stuff we needed to use what we had better. And I just firmly believe that better and more professional management was the answer that we get more of these homeowners to put their properties. And now we get more guests to want to come and stay and continue to stay in vacation rentals instead of in hotels.And so you know, the mission at Rented is and has been to serve those local managers in those local communities. And we do that trying to help them make the most money possible through revenue management. But I think we're gonna keep working on that mission in any way that we can keep seeing opportunities to do that more and better. We're going to continue to do that.

Awesome. Well,that's that's a pretty good prognosis for the future there.I love it. Love it. So we had also we've sent you some questions that if we had time,at the end, we'd like to ask and you had given us a couple. So the one that I would like to ask is, what is one memory that you wish you could relive again?

Yeah, there's,there's one The first night I went away. Every single night when my daughter was born, I would hold her and play Macklemores 'Growing Up' and like dance with her This playlist and we would do bath time, then I read her story and do know. And then singers like made up lullabies until she fell asleep. And then the first night, I was away, it was going to a friend's wedding, the I grew up with, he moved to Dallas. And I was away for just one night, like, flew out that afternoon came back first thing next morning. And when I came home, she had been napping. And her and my wife were both asleep. So I just kind of stayed near through them so I could hear to let my wife sleep. And I heard a rustling and I went into the bed, bedroom. And she saw me in her eyes got so big, she wrapped onto my shirt and held on for dear life and then pushed me away and just want to make sure it was real. Hold me and did that five or six times and just looking? And yeah, this may or may not be a story, like wrote out and reread every now and then because it really is like, the most powerful moment in my life. Me. Yeah.

That's so great.I think whenever you have like that human, it's the human connections that just really,you hold dear and your children.And Alex has dogs and I have dogs. But I have one son. And I can think of some times where it's just like that, that that genuine, like just expression on their face that they're you don't know how you did it. You don't know how you got it. But it's so it's such a connection and that you just couldn't ever replace it. And you'll always hold that, you know, hold that very dear. And you'll think of that when you're 80 , he's married with four kids. Yeah,that's great. So the question that I wanted to ask was, what is the most important personal attribute that you bring to your job about you that you bring to your job?

I think it's curiosity, of if you think about the tenure journey, and the different businesses and business models and product changes, product innovation,this curiosity of hey, what's what's happening in the space,right? Like, not, Oh, I'm so smart. I knew this right. I in2015, I wrote this, this is what's gonna happen in the industry. But then I was curious and kept watching like, no,that's, that's not we kind of LeapFrog. And so I think, the open mindedness that comes with that curiosity, and it, I think,in turn attracts really curious,amazing people to the team.Because I think they see and they get excited by we just kind of feed off each other.

Yeah, absolutely.Well, you, you have an incredible team. And we know several of your staff. And it's just been such a pleasure getting to know everybody and you also and just seeing Renton grow and evolve through the years. I think that's one thing that's just exciting about the time that we're in in vacation rentals, and it would reference Terry White again, he was in the front row of our panel at darme.And he said to the people on our panel, he said, you know, we are all literally writing the history books of this industry.You know, and I think that's a powerful thing. But it is it is the truth. And it's fun to have a front row seat to see all of it and see technology, like rented, you know, really taking the reins. Yeah,

it's been a fun ride so far. And I'm looking forward to it. Another 10. Yeah,absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today,Andrew. And just excited and congratulations on the book. I hope that everybody goes out and get it. It gets it what? Let's do two things. How can they contact you? And how can they get the book?

Yeah, so the book is Get Out of My Head Creating Modern Clarity with Stoic Wisdom. It's available on Amazon, Kindle, Audible, it's all the all the things. Amazon,Barnes and Noble, I gotta say all the different sites, but you can get it basically anywhere.local bookshop can order it, and then connecting with me.LinkedIn is probably the best place that that seems to be where Annie and I are very, very active. Yeah. That seems to be the place.

I'll include that in the show notes. And I listened to the book. I did it on audio. I don't know if I already said that or not. But I really love the audio version of it. And I think you said you got it done in like a day, which is it was two they had four blocks,but okay, well, you did a really good job. And honestly, I was,since this is your first one. I was like, I don't know if it'll be a good. Excellent audio book.And I think, especially since I know you I'm really glad I did it that way because the story is just connected a lot better, but very cool.

Alex and Annie It's been amazing.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Andrew, we will talk to you soon if anybody wants to contact me and I can go to Alex and any podcast.com And until next time. Thank you for listening. Thanks