Behind the PMS: Meet TravelNet Solutions New CEO Boogie Wittenburg

Alex Husner  1:24  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex, and I'm Annie, and we are joined today by Boogie Wittenberg, who is the CEO of travel Net Solutions, the maker of track, PMS software, Boogie. It's so good to see you. Great

Boogie Wittenburg  1:52  
to see you all too. Enjoyed seeing you in Nashville, and glad we're able to get back together.

Annie Holcombe  1:56  
Yeah. So you, we talked, tried to talk to you there, but it was so busy, and you had a lot going on, and so we weren't able to get your full attention, which was totally understandable. We got his full attention. We just couldn't

Alex Husner  2:09  
get the Yeah, the audio didn't like quite come through. Well, there was so

Annie Holcombe  2:12  
much going on, so thank you for coming back. We are looking forward to catching up with you. But for our audience, why don't you share a little bit about your journey through business? Because you're not from the industry, so you have a very fascinating background, and kind of how it brought you to track certainly

Boogie Wittenburg  2:28  
fascinating. I love that. I haven't thought of it in that context, but let's go with it. So I have been in software and technology for about 25 years, so I've seen a lot of change over those years, I would say the common theme with my background has been mission critical infrastructure and mission critical technology. And what I mean by that, this would be the technology that's used to run like large e commerce sites. So for example, and I had mentioned this in my keynote back at Next was involved in the early 2000s with the a company called Rackspace, who basically hosted every cool brand you've ever heard of at that time. GrubHub, we hosted worldwide e commerce for Under Armor. HubSpot, we were early, uh, providers of their services. And so when you're when you're powering the website, like Under Armor globally, like it can't go down. That's what I mean by mission critical and subsequent to that, I've been involved in software as a service that power banks again, like if your banking platform is not working, bad things happen. If you can't move money, you can't get a check, you can't see your balances. And so I've always been involved in mission critical infrastructure and software, which is stressful, but what it is is also really important to the people that leverage that software. And so travel that I see is the same in the same situation. So we're providing a software platform that our customers are using, really, to run their business. It has to work, it has to be reliable, has to be performant, has to be modern. And so that's one of the things that really excites me about the opportunity. But I've done a number of things over my career, but mostly I've been involved in this mission critical infrastructure and mission critical software as a service.

Alex Husner  4:07  
It's been fun watching the journey of track and travel net from many, many years ago that Annie and I have both known a lot of people on your team for from a long time ago and Ryan and how they started the company, and resorts and lodges and just really have just blown up into this mega successful business that has really powered so many companies that we all know in the industry. So I'm sure it must have been exciting to join something like this at this point, where it's already a successful company, and now it's like, where do you go? And I guess that's kind of my question of, how do you take what you've learned just in the greater technology side and apply this to track and to their future vision?

Boogie Wittenburg  4:48  
Yeah, it's super exciting. So Ryan and his team, they built a great company, and they, like you said, they started from really with nothing, and from nothing, they bootstrapped the company, probably starting 25 years ago, when they started resorts and lodges, and then. Came out of a passion of theirs. They were hunting, like to hunt, right? And so that's really was the genesis of resorts and lodges. And if you roll the tape forward, I think about 2015 I don't know the exact dates, but they started building a software platform, which then became track. So, yeah, super exciting. Great foundation to build from as I as I've gone out when I first started back in September, I spent a lot of time out in the market meeting with customers, and what I heard from them over and over was, of course, all customers always have suggestions on, I wish your software did this. I wish the screen looked like that. And I love that actually. I mean, keep the feedback coming. Feedback is a gift. But they all said, generally, like, the software just works. And so I was like, What a great foundation to build from, because there's so much happening in our market and so much opportunity. And our market's really interesting because it is leveraging, I mean, you're seeing sort of really cutting edge technology being introduced into our market, into the short term, vacational market, not just in the US, but globally, which is really awesome, because I think there's just so many choices to choose from in terms of what technology used to power your business. And there's lots of innovation and where innovation happens. I mean, to me, that's what's really exciting, is helping people, you know, build world class businesses by being one of their software providers, and so that's probably a long winded answer to your question, but as we think about the vision of the company going forward, we're still working through that actually, you know, we don't have, like, this one, like cast in stone. Here's where we're going, but it's really about combining, like, modern technology, deep hospitality expertise, which we have a lot of people in the company that have that with really a customer obsessed culture. So to me, we will win, and we won't win every customer, but we will win as a company by providing great customer centric service and support and great software like combining those two things. And so to me, that's where sort of the rubber meets the road is you bring great technology to bear and it works, and then you have incredible people powering that technology and supporting the technology and providing a great customer experience. And from there, you can really iterate it a bunch of different ways. You know, do you think about revenue management? Do you think about guest engagement? Do you go drive into owner CRM and owner acquisition. I mean, there's lots of different ways to go and expand the platform, and so we're still working through exactly which path we'll take there, you know, but first and foremost, it's building a high quality business that we're proud of, with highly engaged employees that are literally working 24 by seven to support customers, and then hopefully customers will feel the, you know, we'll feel that as we help them run their business. One

Annie Holcombe  7:46  
of the things you said, or you said in the beginning, and then you also said it in Nashville a couple of times, was that feedback is a gift. I think that's just a really simplistic way to like to garner that feedback. Because sometimes people are afraid to share, you know, things until they go awry. They're, you know, customers sometimes are like, everything's just humming along. I don't want to share what I really, really want until there's a problem. And sometimes you don't know there's a problem until it's really far down the path. So I think that that's great, that you guys have adopted that attitude. And what I found in talking with your team was that they wanted that feedback, and that they were like, on it and actioning and really, really listening and actually very excited. What I found in talking with your team, really excited to take that feedback from the partners, from various aspects, and they, you know, they they knew that you're not perfect and you're not going to hit every ball out of the park every single time, but as long as your customers are engaged, you're you're building a better product. So I think that you have the great foundation that, again, the brothers built, you know, of track and so you can take it forward. So what are you what are you looking at? I think of the companies that are trying to do all of the things, because you're doing a lot of everything that used to be just, you know, kind of bolt on pieces to a PMS, how do you balance that, that need, or that and that need, that desire to be able to have a one stop shop for everybody, with the ability to take feedback and not feel overwhelmed by all the pieces and parts that you're trying to manage? Yeah, I

Boogie Wittenburg  9:07  
think about it as well. First of all, thanks for the nice commentary. I agree. Like, feedback is really important, and it's it's like, from a culture standpoint and from an expectation standpoint, I set that tone internally as well. Like, I want bad news first. If I learn bad news, you know, if a project lasts for a month and I learned some bad news at the end of week one, I still have time to correct that. If I learn that like in the third week, then it gets a little bit more difficult to correct. So, like, let's share bad news first. And bad news takes a bunch of different colors. But the idea is, like, let's just be transparent, candid, and then try to get our customers to share that as well. You know, fortunately, in this industry, like there is full of good people and like they will generally tell you how they feel, especially if you ask them. They may not just come out and tell you, but they will, especially if you ask them. So that's what I've really been trying to do, is meeting with customers I've. Met with folks that aren't our customers, that were on the platform, you know, four years ago and maybe had a bad experience. Talked to one this morning, for example, wants to come back to track. So there's so many different things you learn by just having those conversations, just about the industry. And like you mentioned earlier, I don't come from the industry, so I am like a sponge, and anybody I can talk to that will impart some knowledge, like I will. I want to spend time with them, because I have so much to learn, and I recognize that there's been people like Wendy Glover on my team. I have a great team, which I'm really excited about. Like Wendy Glover has been doing this for 30 years, like she'll know more. I probably should have said 25 because she gets mad, because then she starts thinking about trying to say her age or age, or whatever, but she's been doing this for a couple of years, and she's really good at it, and she knows more than I'll ever know, and that, you know, that's great. I'm really glad she's part of what we're doing. But to answer your question more specifically, it's really both, and it's not either or. We're not trying to be everything to everybody. And so if you think about track, it's a property management system that, from my perspective, is the middle of the tech stack, right? That's the middle of the stack that has all the data, has all the workflows, the trust accounting, to manage a lot of complex business processes. And it is a bunch of really complex business processes that software is great for. It manages those things on your behalf. Once somebody puts it together with that said, over time, you know, we will, we will add capabilities to the platform. You know, we have a build by partner mindset, like we're not going to build everything, we're not going to buy everything, and we're not going to partner, but we're going to do some of those. We're going to have some of those models for each of our each of the features and functions we want to offer. And as we, as we think about that, you know, we will add capabilities to the platform that customers are asking for and even that customers don't even know that they need yet. So to me, that's like, where the magic happens is where your product teams are. So you met with like Rosita at the event, who I remember she was, she like, lit up. She

Alex Husner  11:59  
did, yeah, I was literally just going to mention that, yeah. I mean,

Boogie Wittenburg  12:03  
so often to see she's so excited about what she's building and getting feedback from customers. And matter of fact, just last week, we rolled out that that mobile owner application that she was talking about that she's so fired up about. But the this is, again, I ramble so you guys have to keep me on track a little bit, because I get so excited about this stuff. But at the end of the day, it's really a both and strategy. We're not going to build everything, and we're not going to offer just like an end to end shop. Now, we may have pieces and parts of that, and over time, it'd be great if a customer only wanted to work with us, then they could, but I know customers want to integrate, you know, all kinds of different capability platform, yeah, and so having an API enable capability and having a strong partnership ecosystem is really, really important to us as well. So that's what I mean when I say both. And we're not trying to build this monolithic or completely horizontal platform that does everything soup to nuts. That would be cool. But I think for, you know, for professional property managers that are probably north of 25 properties, like, that's not what they're looking for. If you have 10 properties, like, give me an all in one solution, and that's great. But as you think about a professional property manager, which is really the customer set we are oriented around, they want to have some flexibility, and we want to provide that flexibility for

Alex Husner  13:19  
them. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And it's so funny. This is now Annie, the third episode this year that that quote has come up, or, just like the the theory and theme of it's and not or right? And I love, I love that. And it was funny because I heard it on, it was a Gary V podcast probably a couple months ago, and it just, it resonated so much with me, and then, like, it is so applicable to so many different parts of business and life, and we've talked about it with certain people, and I think it's, you know, you clearly. I think you, you prescribed it the same way that we think about things. So I love that you have, you have to in this industry, you know, because it's like, you can't expect that what you have is perfect for everybody, right? And likewise for other vendors too. It's like, you can't be that disappointed when you don't win every bid, because there's reasons why. And if you are not the perfect fit, you know, everybody does business in a different way in this industry, and you're going to find the people that are right for it. But I will say, as far as your team, and the people that you've chosen that I think all of them seem like great fits that we had a chance to interview while we were at the Next Conference. The level of passion that just like exuded out of each of them as they were talking about, I mean, you mentioned Rosita and the owner, yeah, Evan, the owner portal, and then David and the AI component, and, gosh, there's probably at least two or three others that we talked to, and it's like they just got so excited talking about the, you know, product that they kind of own within the software, and, like, what their their role has been there and and for them being able to see in person at that event how it's helping, or, like, just getting feedback from customers, as if it hasn't been rolled out yet, you can just tell, like, there's, there's a different. There's a lot of heart in what you guys do, and I don't know that. I feel that in all businesses that that we talk to, I mean, sometimes, like the upper management might have that, but you don't see it as you know the people that are building it. You don't get to see that. So I think that was a really cool thing for Annie and I at the show.

Boogie Wittenburg  15:16  
Yeah, well, thank you guys for giving them a forum, because they are fired up about what they're doing, and they're passionate about it. And if I think about I'm kind of a business dork, and there's all these frameworks I use to kind of think about how I construct the business, and one of them is called the service profit chain. It was actually probably written 20 years ago, and it was really more about services business, but it applies to what we're doing here, and really any business from my perspective, and it's real simple. It's like constituency number one is employees, number two, customers, and number three, shareholders. And if you hire the right people, and you engage them, and you train them, and then you actually separate with the ones that don't work out, it's a bunch of operating mechanisms. But if you do that, they will build great things for customers. And then, if customers are happy, then your shareholders are happy, so you don't even worry about your shareholders, right?

Alex Husner  16:08  
I love it, but it's really hard

Boogie Wittenburg  16:10  
to actually make all the operating things happen. But like, I think about winning employees hearts and minds, and so what I want is, and it's, you know, not saying everybody feels this way all the time, but a highly engaged employee is someone who is literally, this is going to be a weird visual. Let's just say they're driving down the highway, you know, at seven o'clock at night, and they're actually thinking about a problem. They're trying to solve it work and have an epiphany. You know, another example, they'd be in the shower, right? They're just in the shower, not thinking about work, and all of a sudden they're like, boom, they have an epiphany. If you have people that are highly engaged that will happen now, if they're not, it won't happen, right? They'll think about, I hate my job, I hate whatever. They'll

Alex Husner  16:46  
think about it only when they're sitting in front of the computer at the such a that's such a good way to No,

Annie Holcombe  16:51  
you're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I am years ago, when I first started out in the hospitality I actually had worked at a large Marriott Resort, and we did some training. And one of the things that they the principal that they had back then, I think they still have it now, is that you have two customers. You have an internal and an external customer, and if you take care of the internal customer, that they're going to make sure that that external customer is that their expectations are far exceeded. And you're, you're absolutely right. It's like if people wake up and they're, they're passionate about what they're doing, they're exciting, and they feel valued in the process, and they feel that their their input is taken at their that they're encouraged to learn and encouraged to not try. I mean, I think that that's what I like do with my team, is like, you have the gut instinct go with it. It's not always going to be right, but if it, if it messes things up, like we're not curing cancer here, you know, like it's, it's things are going to break. Yeah, you got to try. You got to fail. It's the only way to to succeed in the long run. So I think it's very evident that you have done that with your team, and it's great, because with that excitement, the momentum is not going to stop. You're just going to keep moving forward. So I thought on that note, like you were telling us off camera about some of the new people that you brought in the team, and you're very excited about that. And I think, why don't you tell us about the new team members and kind of what their roles are, and what you see moving forward for track with these new people? Yeah,

Boogie Wittenburg  18:07  
certainly, absolutely. So I've been here about eight months. At this point, I actually became CEO officially in the middle of November, I think November 15, and about that same time I ended added Wendy Glover to the mix, and Wendy, longtime industry expert, was actually deploying our software platform for customer, you know, for our customers prior to this, in her own consultancy. So she knows our software very well. She thinks like a customer, which is great because she's a she's a hard grader, I guess you would say, and she's now leading our success, our support implementations and our digital marketing services, account management function, and so like she is meeting the customer, where they meet our software and our services, which is great. And she does a space like I said, more recently, hired a gentleman named Jason ring, who's leading our go to market activities, which is our really, all the marketing and sales related functions, and also including sort of customer renewals and customer relationships on ongoing basis. Jason is an interesting story because he was in the industry probably seven years ago. Worked for a company called Navis, which got acquired by revenate. You guys have all probably heard of Navis at the time, and I didn't. I wasn't in the space then, but my understanding was Navis was like cutting edge in terms of their customer centricity and the way they engaged customers and customers, they would even call Customer succession, I don't think as a thing, but they had these customer advocates that would go out and teach people how to use the platform, and that's where he started. He started as a customer advocate, worked his way up through sales, subsequently led some large sales organizations for other companies in other industries, and now he's kind of coming home, so to speak, which he's really excited about. In addition to that, I mean, we're a software company, and so engineering is paramount, like building software and keeping it current, keeping it modern, leveraging, you know, just modern practices. And modern infrastructure is really important. And so based on that, I was able to, I can't tell you his name yet because he hasn't started, but I just hired a new SVP of engineering who comes from, I would say, a tangential industry, in that he's been the property management space, but not in short term rentals. What that means is he has a lot of experience with platforms that are very similar to ours, revenue management, digital marketing services, websites, property management systems. And so he is a really I was excited to find him, because he's a great leader and also a very technical person. He's a person he'll probably kill me for saying this, but for fun, like he builds circuit boards. Okay? So he is, like, a great engineering leader, and I love that, because this is, like, you know, he's just very passionate about the technology and how it combines with customer requirements. And so, you know, those, those folks go along with some great team members that we've had on on staff for a long time. But I'm really excited about you guys know Tim. Tim shoots, who's been leading sales, who will now report to Jason, has been at travel net for 14 years, and so you talk about like deep industry and hospitality expertise. There are many more names I'll forget, and I'll probably get in trouble for forgetting them, but we have a great team of sort of some some new folks that are joining with some new thinking and some new approaches, as well as like this deep expertise and customer you know, relationships from from the past, and bringing all those things together and just trying to create the best, the best of both worlds.

Alex Husner  21:34  
Well, that's exciting, and we're exciting to me, excited to meet this new person whenever we

Boogie Wittenburg  21:39  
figure out who that is, VR nation here in Austin, so we'll see.

Alex Husner  21:43  
Oh, okay, I may unveil that's really cool. We'll be back in just a minute, but first a message from our premier brand sponsor,

Alex Husner  23:14  
You know, when we were talking with you in Nashville, one of the things that we chatted about, you know, and full transparency, and I think you guys have owned this well, that there was a time when the support at track customers had issues with it, right? I'll put it that way, but you've made a marked improvement, an effort or effort to improving that, it seems like, and maybe just for anybody who's listening, who either used to be on track or has looked at track and maybe just had heard about that, like, how have you improved that? Because it seems like it has changed from what I've heard from people and also just from what you're sharing, as far as how the team works with customers. Yeah,

Boogie Wittenburg  24:07  
thank you for asking that question. So like I said in the very beginning, I'm trying to build a winning combination of great software and a great customer experience and support is sort of the big bucket that customer experience gets put to put into. It is like when something's broken and I pick up the phone or I, you know, submit a ticket, what happens? And one of the it's actually interesting, one of the ways I describe culture, and I remember talking to travel in about the first day I started, is I describe a company's culture, is how people respond to a customer when their boss is not looking, or what decision an employee makes when there's not a policy on how to make that decision. It's like, what is their gut instinct? And that's normally based on core values, and it's just based on common lot of times it's common sense, right? Like, you know the golden rule, but, but I actually grew up in support, and like I talked about earlier, my. Background In mission critical infrastructure. When I was at this company called Rackspace, I was there for a decade. I started in support. I was there for a couple of not only ended up being there for a couple of months, but again, that's like where the rubber meets the road. That's where a customer is in a moment of need, and they're trying to run their business, and they need help. And so, like, I understand the importance of that, and I think our industry probably, overall does not do an awesome job there. So again, I'm not speaking for other companies that don't really know their support experience, but I haven't heard great things across our industry. And so for example, when I learned, it actually took me four months to learn, because I never actually asked a question, but I learned probably in December, like we don't really answer the phone. So if you called us with a support challenge, you would leave a message. And I heard that like just, I mean, I probably fell off my chair.

Alex Husner  25:52  
No, no. I mean, nobody likes to leave messages, just in regular car. I know, you know, if your business is on fire, you sure as I don't want to leave a message, no,

Boogie Wittenburg  26:02  
absolutely not. And so, and what ends up happening is the customers find a way, right? They're going to find my number and call me, which is fine, I put my mobile number, it's on my email. Like, you can call my mobile number anytime. If you're a customer. I don't care, but they end up trying to find someone, but they have to go through a bunch of hoops to do it. And so, like, I'm like, hey, hey, I've got an idea. We're going to start answering the phones, right? So it comes down to, you know, I think it comes down to making support and customer experience a priority, and then you resource that organization sufficiently, because you have to have no people right at the right time to manage the tickets, to answer the phones and those kind of things. And so we're just bringing some focus to that area, which I think will change the dynamic. But number one, we're going to answer the phones. Number two, we have a lot of goals this year around response times and then resolution times, like respond immediately. Some issues are harder than others. It may take a while to resolve them, but then, if you also back that up into engineering, like there's we're also doing a tremendous amount of work to solve the challenges before they happen, right? And so do you solve them engineering, and then a customer never experiences, doesn't have that support problem, so it all ties together. And it's, you know, it is a thread that we're pulling through the organization. But the spirit is like, reduce support requirements for customers, but when then they, when they do have a challenge, like respond quickly, like Johnny on the spot, and, you know, step one, let's answer the phones, which is what we're doing. Now, I love

Annie Holcombe  27:30  
that, because I think you're, you're absolutely right when people that's the thing about property management, is that a lot of times those fires, they just pop up out of nowhere, and they need a resolution. Especially, it seems to always happen on Friday, a Fourth of July weekend, at five o'clock, when everybody's going, you know, going out. Problems always happen. So on that note, like kind of a two fold question, are you use using AI? But kind of more to the depth of it, because you do have so many pieces of what TNS has, like, within the whole portfolio, you've got distribution, you've got the property management, you've got accounting, you've got all these different things. How do you get staffing that can handle I'm assuming that. So I think this is where the AI would come in to help you do that, because that's a lot of information to try to juggle and make people knowledgeable about. So how are you finding a balance in that? Yeah, it's a

Boogie Wittenburg  28:23  
great question. There are certainly it is, is a broad portfolio requires lots of subject matter expertise and and different expertise. So like, we literally have support experts in accounting, because accounting is such a big part of our property management system. And, you know, we see a big surge. It just kind of ended, actually, we see a big surge in q1 every year because a lot of, lot of property management, uh Oh, I better figure out my accounting for last year so I can get my taxes done and whatnot. So I would say we're in the early stages of using AI. AI is in our product today. So we have in our distribution product. We have it in our, well, in a couple different places, for reviews, management, managing images. It's funny, you ask that, because just this morning, I was reviewing the company's, like, each functional area's goals for the year, and I literally have an AI goal in every single one, because I won't go just lights out, use it for everything, but, like, it is moving really quickly. And there are some interesting things like I saw, literally, I saw a news article, like I told you, I'm a Business dork, and I read the journal too much and whatnot, but there's an article about Toby. I forget his last name. He's CEO of Shopify. And basically what he mandated, you know, guys know, Shopify, right? Huge Canadian company, and he mandated to his teams like they can't grow their teams in size until they prove that AI can't do what they're trying to do. So you actually kind of flip the script, which is actually interesting, like saying, Hey, you can't grow your team until you prove to me that that's the only way you can get more effective.

Alex Husner  29:51  
Eliminate roles because we have this. Is that what you mean? No,

Boogie Wittenburg  29:54  
it's not saying that at all. You're saying, Hey, you want, you want five more people in support. Great. Maybe you need. Them, but prove to me that you you can't get there with AI, yeah, which is probably, I'm not going to go that far. I mean, I just read this today, for example, but that's how people are thinking about it. And, you know, we're thinking about it the same way. So we use, we use platforms and support like Zendesk, and they're building AI into their product. Then it comes down to, do you have great articles and knowledge bases that the AI can ingest, then they can resurface the customer. So we will use it like we're to that point. We're not like saying we're going to cut staff and use AI that hadn't even crossed anybody's mind. It's really about getting more effective with the people that we have. But in support, for example, we're adding people, you know, in engineering, we're adding people. Our company is growing overall. I mentioned the leadership hires a moment ago, but like, we're literally hiring, you know, data scientists and developers and support experts. And, yeah, we just hired a new customer success leader, and she's, she's awesome. So it's an augmentation, I think, but it will make, I think it will make supporting a broad portfolio of products easier over time. There is some work you have to do up front, though, right? You just, you don't for sure,

Alex Husner  31:14  
yeah, in any of them, because it's like, it's funny, too. You mentioned Zendesk, and when I was at condo world, we we use Zendesk for our chat, but we were looking at back then. This is way before AI. It's probably four years ago. We were looking at building out our own library of like, help desk type things, because we did a ton of chats. I mean, like our agents were chatting all day long and thinking, okay, how can we have them more easily? Or have the automation not even called AI at that point, but like, answer their questions ahead of time. And it was, it was a huge heavy lift. It was possible, but it was a huge heavy lift to set all that up. But I think with any AI type thing now it still ends up being the same thing. It's like, you've got it, your team has to spend the time up front, but like, you have to focus on the time that you're going to get on the back side of that, that you're being able to spend more time with, with guests, with owners, being hospitable, growing the business and working on strategies. So it's like, it's worth doing the painstaking time of getting all your policies and all your check in rules and all those things, and really in that process, doing an audit of it like that's been fascinating to me working with clients now is like, there's so much stuff that lives in the software that is wrong that nobody knows, like, where it is, where it's coming from. And it's like, when they go to launch a new app, they're like, oh my god, I can't believe we've been sending this out for last three years. We had no idea. And one client, I hope that they're listening that their confirmation policy, they're in a beach destination, said in the policies, do whatever you do, do not bring your ski boots inside the snow plows. What that doesn't that's a beach problem.

Annie Holcombe  32:59  
I mean, we had snow in Florida this year, you never know. I mean

Alex Husner  33:03  
literally so. But we don't have snow

Annie Holcombe  33:06  
plow, so you would never have to worry about that. We just shut everything down for two weeks,

Alex Husner  33:10  
but, but at the same time, you know, I think putting in that time is super important. And you know, another point on that that just made me think, as you were explaining it, it's like the the phrase AI is not going to replace you, but somebody using AI will, and I just think about and it's so true, and you can take it for a company too. AI is not going to take your homeowners, but a company using AI could, right, because they're gonna be faster to get back to guests and be faster to get back to homeowners. So how do you infuse that in your day to day, so that you're, like, running as effectively as possible. And it shouldn't be something that you're, you're scared of. I mean, I know from for myself personally, like I've, I've every week and every month, like compounding. I feel like I'm using it so much more and just daily things and like, it really, it's, it can't go on autopilot. You were this. You're the strategist. No matter who you are, what company you are, you have to tell it, and you have to refine it. But it does cut down so much on on time that you could just be spending in other areas that are more higher value. Yeah,

Boogie Wittenburg  34:13  
agreed 100% and I love that. Love that, saying there are so many entry level tasks that some of our people do every day, that could easily be replaced by AI. And doesn't mean we're getting rid of the people. The people are then going to start focusing on more, higher value added tasks, like, how can I help a customer solve this problem? Versus, you know, just something that machine could do, for example. And so I think that's exactly it, because there's no doubt that it, it's here to stay. It's got here pretty quickly, right? I mean, it was machine learning and data science before, but now it's much more refined, like talking about those chats you mentioned a couple years ago. I mean, now AI could probably ingest a lot of those chats that become a combination of,

Alex Husner  34:55  
yeah, they could build probably the whole learning module, right?

Boogie Wittenburg  34:59  
What you. Give me all the chats that happened in the last six weeks. Okay, then we can Pareto out. Here's all the product issues. Here's the top five, top 10. So I think there's going to be so much more we can do with that's how I think about it, in terms of like support, challenge or support, you know, ticket types or customer inquiries. How do you Pareto that out? How do you get that back into engineering? How does engineering work on that in every sprint, so that you're improving your software while you're delivering innovation and making the lives of your customer support people better, and they're focused on things that require brain power, not, you know, not answering the same question over and over, for example.

Alex Husner  35:35  
Well, I this is actually, like, very timely. So just a conversation with somebody on my team that we work with a client that uses track and they asked me, does track record the transcripts of phone calls? Because that would be great to be able to take that and then put into AI to find out what people are asking is, is that possible?

Boogie Wittenburg  35:58  
Well, you're asking the wrong person. It

Alex Husner  36:02  
would be great to find out. I'm not sure if it is. I know it is not possible right now with any of the other softwares. So like, it was something that we're like, you're I mean, your call center component, by far, is the strongest of any the ones I've worked with. But that's why we were thinking we're like, if that is a possibility, or if it's not, I bet you guys, I'm sure David's like, wheels are turning now, and maybe could do that, but that would be really cool. Like today, I think

Boogie Wittenburg  36:23  
it's a great it's a great point. I mean, more it's also interesting. As I've been on zooms, even in the last six months, you see all these transcription tools that are kind of coming out of nowhere, like, what are that? Who's actually behind this otter.ai? Thing, right? Proliferation of AI transcription. But So the technology is there, like, if we haven't deployed that in the platform, then I think it's a great idea, and we're gonna, we're gonna name it

Alex Husner  36:48  
after

Unknown Speaker  36:52  
y'all, we're gonna name

Alex Husner  36:53  
the future. Oh my gosh, and

Unknown Speaker  37:02  
I'll follow up on that. It's a great one.

Annie Holcombe  37:04  
Um, on all the innovations that you guys have done. One of the thing, one of the ones that I know your team was really excited to tell us about, and I saw that it recently rolled out, like fully rolled out, was the owner module, I think, is, what is, is that what it was called? Yeah, talk a little bit about that, because I think that from property management standpoint, there's been a lot of companies that have come in and said, like, here's how you retain your owners, here's how you grow your owner base. But nobody said, like, this is how you should be servicing your owners. It's really more about how you go get them. And I think that this, this kind of combines the best of both worlds, if I was understanding it correctly. So maybe talk a little bit about that for the audience.

Boogie Wittenburg  37:39  
Yeah, this one phase, one roll out is really about two things. One is about mobile functionality, and putting a mobile interface in the hands of your owners where they can actually be connected to their properties all the time. And then that, we believe that helps you retain those owners over time. They want to know, they want to have information. How's my home performing in the market? What's happening in the market overall, and if you think about it, like not having that information. As humans, we all draw our own conclusions, and they're never good. So we always assume that we're so we climb what's called a ladder of inference, and we just we reaffirm data with with more bad data. And so we're just trying to help our property managers surface data about the homes and the markets, etc, to their homeowners, that's really phase one. It doesn't have a big component on going and acquiring new owners. Like it's not a victory, or it's not a system like that. However, the role that if I'm a property manager and you own a property, I've got to convince you that I'm dialed in, right? Here's how I'm going to manage your property. Here's how I'm going to communicate with you. Here's a direct booking website I'm going to provide for you for a direct booking solution, in addition to distribution to all the OTAs. And so there's like, I got to prove to you that I'm a great partner, right? And so this is really part of that, so it's part of me proving to you as an owner, I'm a great partner as I as I visited customers a lot the second half of 2024 I heard a lot about owner communications, and a lot about guest engagement and guest communications, less about owner acquisition, certainly some about that. But I think at that time, people were like, I got to keep the owners that I have. And so I think over time, we'll look to expand that. But, you know, getting information. And then there's even more data we can put in into the system about what's happening with the market, what's happening, you know, with this with a specific property. And so that really will be phase two and phase three. But yeah, we're excited about that, because one of the top things I hear is that we need a mobile solution to help our property managers communicate with their owners so, and that's what Rosita was talking to you guys about,

Annie Holcombe  39:44  
yeah, I love I love that, having been in property management, I mean, I think that I spent more time dealing with owner stuff, yeah, that if you could just do it, you could do it on the flyer, that they could even access some of it. I remember when they started coming out with, like, the owner portals, where people could log in, and it was like, no. I don't want them to see the calendar. That's just too much. But that some of this, the ability to communicate and be transparent, is so important to building that trust with your owners. And I think that you guys have hit something that you know, like I said, there's companies out there saying, like, here we can help you get owners, but there's nobody telling you, like, how to, like, really service them to the degree that they need their servicing.

Boogie Wittenburg  40:20  
Yeah, I think it's both and, like, once you get an owner, like, you need to retain them forever. Yeah, about software, it's we think about it the same way, like I we win a customer like I do want to win them all. I'm not going to win them all, but I want to, we want to retain that customer forever. We want to have a customer for life. We want to be their trusted advisor. You know, it doesn't always work out that way, but that is our mentality, right? Yeah, I think a property manager is the same way. Now there could be, you know, I guess you know, I never want to fire a customer, and I'm sure a property manager never wants to fire an owner, but

Unknown Speaker  40:59  
celebration to do that.

Boogie Wittenburg  41:00  
You want to be the one in charge of that, right? So, right? You know, like, this industry is full of great people. I'm sure there's a few bad apples out there. I haven't met them yet, but, but, yeah, like, you want to be in control. And, you know, at the end of the day, you want most of your customers to be customers for life.

Alex Husner  41:17  
It is funny, though, because I don't hear about, I mean, for sure, homeowners, yes, or property managers, companies firing owners, that's definitely something that is talked about it and almost, like, I don't say celebrated in a bad way, but like, like, trying to give people confidence that it's okay if, yeah, it's okay if they're not right for you. Like, it's okay to say no, and it's okay to close off a stream of revenue if it's not good for the future of your business, which, I think a lot of companies, they they struggle because they're like, oh, man, like, this could be a great performing property, but, like, the stress that they put on the company is terrible. But on the other side of it, I think about the software companies, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't hear about software companies firing clients, right? Like, you don't hear that as much. And so it is kind of an interesting difference between, you know, it's service on both and what you do versus what property managers do. But if yours is with a product, and it's like you don't, you don't hear that quite as much, but it does. I don't know if that even happens. It

Boogie Wittenburg  42:15  
does happen, not very often, fortunately, but I can recall a couple times in my past where I've had a customer like treat a support person like professionally with language and profanity. And I, you know, they're usually not your biggest and most important customer anyway. They're usually, they're usually not, luckily, usually have deep relationship with those. But I've, yeah, we've, we've asked customers to leave the platform before? Yeah, that happens very often.

Alex Husner  42:42  
Right reason to, honestly, that's the right reason to, even if they are a big customer, you know, it's like that you just, you have to do what's right by your employees for sure. Yeah, exactly,

Boogie Wittenburg  42:50  
exactly. Yeah. Life's too short.

Annie Holcombe  42:53  
Yeah, very true. Well,

Alex Husner  42:55  
before we wrap up, we always like to ask this question. I think it's actually most interesting with you, because this is, you're not doing something new as a as a skill, and what you're actually doing in your profession, exactly, but it is a different industry. But the question we ask is, what does what you do for your career say about you and your lifetime and the impact that you want to have on people that you work with?

Boogie Wittenburg  43:20  
Wow, we're going deep. I like it. What's your legacy gonna be? You know, I think about, I've worked with a lot of great people over the years in different companies, and I was thinking about this last night, actually. And I'm not bragging by any means, but there are a number of folks who work for me that are now running like, some pretty interesting companies, and that's pretty awesome. Like, I didn't set out for that to be a goal, necessarily, but it's pretty cool that it's happened, and then I've maybe been in the right place at the right time, and so that's fulfilling. I also have a lot of deep relationships with teams I've built in the past, even though I'm not working with them anymore, and they they would actually have a reason, probably, to not even like me anymore, but yet they are still fans. And so that says a lot about, you know, kind of the legacy I want to leave is, like, treat people how they want, how I want to be treated. Do the right thing. I'm definitely going to make mistakes, but, you know, do the right thing. It's not that hard. It's common sense. But I always try to leave things like in better shape than I find them, whether that's a company, whether that's my kitchen, you know, I went in there a minute ago. My kid came home from high school at lunch. I mean, it's like the Tasmanian devil had been in there. I cleaned it up. I didn't want to clean it up. And so, like, I don't know, I just, I just am, I guess I'm a servant leader. I'm always trying to take care of those people that are around me. I like to have fun. I think is another thing. So you think about what I want to be remembered as, and I'm, God, I'm writing my my writing my obituary here, I hope not, but you know, I want to be remembered as someone like that works really hard, that has a lot of fun. The process and that drives, you know, positivity and positive change. I have a lot of shortcomings, but that's kind of, that's kind of how I want to be remembered. And, you know, someone who develops people, someone who takes an interest in in developing people and making them better, yeah, that's how I think about them.

Annie Holcombe  45:15  
Well, so far, I think you're, you're nailing all of those. I think you're doing

Alex Husner  45:19  
super admirable, yeah, very and authentically admirable. I don't mean that. Just saying the right things. I think we can, you're doing them. See that. Yeah, and appreciate it. This has been, this has been a fun one. I don't know this is a good episode. Definitely happy that we finally got you on. And of course, we're super excited to have track and TNS as a sponsor of the show, and appreciate the support that you guys have given us, and just excited to see you at VR nation and all the other conferences coming up. So let's maybe talk about that before we jump off. You guys will be at all assume, right, VR nation coming up in Austin. Yes, executive Summit. Any other ones on the horizon? I mean,

Boogie Wittenburg  45:59  
of course, we'll be at DARM again in the fall, a matter of fact, because Amy already knew Jason ring, who I spoke of earlier. She already asked him to speak, which he didn't even know about, which I thought was funny. So we'll definitely be at those. You know, there's a bunch of smaller ones that we attend as well. I don't know the names off the top of my head, because I don't go to all of them, but there's a there's a lot of them. It's okay. Yeah, I'll be it. I'll be at those three that you mentioned for sure, and maybe a couple of other ones as well. But, yeah, looking forward to it. I mean, it's always fun to to see customers and prospects and partners. I mean, that's what I love about this industry, is like, it's full of really great people. I won't mention any names, but like, I've been working here for like, three months. And I told someone I was going to be like, in their town for a weekend with my adult daughter. And they were like, yeah, just stay at my house. And I was like, Oh, the vacation rental for the

Alex Husner  46:55  
weekend though, you know, I'm

Boogie Wittenburg  46:57  
kind of the same way. I mean, people come stay at my house. It might be like, Whoa, come on blue, but that's what I love about it's like, great people trying to do great things. And at the end of the day, we're all trying to make other people, you know, experience is great, right? Trying to make them happy and trying to create great experiences for people. So it's fun from that perspective, yeah, for

Annie Holcombe  47:21  
the most part, we're one big, happy family. Yeah, we have a few dysfunctional

Boogie Wittenburg  47:29  
Well, great. Well, it's been fun talking to y'all,

Annie Holcombe  47:30  
yeah, and if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to reach out? You're on LinkedIn, and

Boogie Wittenburg  47:36  
LinkedIn, my email is just b Wittenberg at TNS, inc.com, that's a mouthful by the two best ways. How many

Alex Husner  47:47  
more boogies Do you think there will be at track? Any

Boogie Wittenburg  47:53  
show? Haven't exerted my CEO power yet to tell them to give

Alex Husner  48:00  
Yeah, I should do

Boogie Wittenburg  48:01  
that. I'm gonna do that right after getting off the sale

Unknown Speaker  48:04  
email book.

Alex Husner  48:06  
You have a very unique name. I mean, if there, if there's Boogie too, and that's this Boogie and this too, yeah, actually, you

Annie Holcombe  48:12  
should, you should have your AI chat bot named Boogie, that way everybody's talking to boogie.

Alex Husner  48:18  
Absolutely cool too. It's

Annie Holcombe  48:20  
a blessing and a curse, right? Yeah.

Alex Husner  48:23  
Well, thank you so much. Boogie for coming on with us today. This was a pleasure. And if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time, thanks for tuning in, everybody.