Building a Boutique Brand: How Steve Turk Brings Hotel Standards to Vacation Rentals

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals, I'm Alex,

Annie Holcombe  
and I'm Annie,

Alex Husner  
and we are joined today with Steve Turk, who is the founder of tangy management, Steve, it's so good to see you.

Steve Turk  
Hey, good to be here with you both. I'm excited to be here. Long time coming.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, so I feel like we ran into you recent, well, a few months, but look, I don't even know. The Fall has flown by so quickly. We ran into you down in Orlando. It was good to finally see you in person, but like we've seen you nothing through video for a long time. Um, but for our listeners, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey into hospitality and vacation rentals?

Steve Turk  
Well, I've been in hospitality my entire adult life would say. So I've been doing a luxury hospitalizing some about 24 years now, and that was mostly in the hotel side. So I worked through luxury hotels like Lowe's hotels, Mandarin Oriental viceroy hotels, Morgan's Hotel Group and a couple others. And, you know, I got to a point where I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Got that entrepreneurial itch, and I had done a little stint with that for four years as a staffing company owner, which I did not like at all, and sold that company, which I was lucky enough to do. And right after COVID, like everybody else, was kind of looking at my life, what am I doing? I was an executive on Miami Beach at a great hotel, and I just wasn't seeing my family at all. I wasn't seeing my kids or my wife, and I had someone I knew that wanted to start up and find, you know, get a vacation rental company going, and we co founded it together, and we started tangy management, where we're all hoteliers, and we bring hotel standards and experiences and bring them into the vacation rental world. So we're excited about what we're doing now. Oh,

Alex Husner  
that's great, yeah. And you have so much experience on the hotel side, and now, obviously I've just really made a name for yourself and really bringing the guest experience and that luxury feel to the vacation rental side. But you also are a podcast host like us. Yeah, yeah, you've got a nice mic set up as well. Tell us a little bit about that. About that too, about the hospitality

Steve Turk  
mentor, yeah. So it's funny how it started was, I told you I had a staffing company for a couple of years, and what I realized is, once you're out of the hotel, everyone who said they were going to help you really didn't. And I became a vendor, right? I was like, I'm a vendor for the first time, I actually have to sell to people, and they're not picking up my calls. And I remember that feeling back then, and so I was very conscious when I came out this time to start this company and consulting and all the other fun stuff we're doing was that I needed a tool to be able to get in front of people. And I said, I'm going to start a podcast, because I know that if I call this leader multiple times just to do a sales call, they're not going to pick up the phone. And it was true. I did that a couple times, and I was like, Hey, I just want you to be on my podcast. Like, yeah, I'll be on your podcast. And so it started as a tool just to market and for me to get in front of people and then create some content. And then it just kind of exploded. It took off to where, you know, one night I just was having a glass of wine, I was like, I think if I invite all these CEOs of like, big hotel companies, they might come on. So after a glass and a half of wine, I was sending off these emails and LinkedIn messages, and a lot of them said yes, and that really helped me, because these big names came on the show, and it made me all of a sudden an expert of hospitality, and so it was just a great feeling. And now I really enjoy it. I wish I could make that my full time job. So I'm going to keep pushing it and keep pushing the podcast to see we can get it there. But I love it, because it's called the hospitality mentor available on all streaming platforms, is we're interviewing people about how they got to where they are, because so many people look at that CEO or Executive or general manager or chef, you know, owner of a vacation rental company we just talked to how they got there, because everyone thinks it's impossible. And I really want to motivate the younger generations coming up that this is a great industry, and here's the roadmap to get there.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, I

Annie Holcombe  
think, I think that's one thing that Alice and I identified with the podcast, is that, you know, to your point, like, all of a sudden people that would never have talked to you, they want to talk to you, and you kind of like, have to be like, Well, wait a minute. Maybe I don't want to talk to you right now. Maybe you're not just suited for exactly what we're doing, but it has opened doors, and I think what you're doing with it educating people, and it's kind of similar to what Alex and I intended for our podcast, was that we would share stories and show like, not that, not that there was, like, this underbelly of the business, but that it wasn't, it was a lot of work. It was hard work. But where hospitality in general is a really giving space to be in, and when people have that I call the hospitality gene, they're going to help each other, and they're going to want the best for each other. And so I think what you're doing is more again, on the hotel side. But you know, we've seen it crosses over into vacation rentals, and certainly need that hospitality and hotel mindset to really manage and scale a vacation rental business. So our

Alex Husner  
show started almost exactly the same with the glasses of wine. So, yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
very, very similar. Or, yes,

Steve Turk  
come over a glass of wine. But I tell you, this was that now it's starting to merge, right? Because it was just hotels, that's where I came from, but now it's starting to merge into all different things, like cruise ships and restaurants and, you know, business owners. I'm really focusing on business owners this year because I really want to highlight it's really hard to be a business owner. I think people need to understand that. But it's been fun, because a lot of people just think it's a podcast, but now it's evolved into doing networking events. Because I was like, All right, some I got a lot of people messaging me, and they want answers on certain things. Let's get them all together. So I called up a location. We did the first one. I thought maybe 10 people or 20 people would come, and 250 people showed up. I was like, Oh, wow. Great event. Here. I was free the first one, so they all right, let me make this next one $10 and then I had 180 people show up. And then we did another one for like, $40 but with vendors and some fun things, and we still had 200 people come. And so for me, it was just great to see that there's this community being built. And if you really take it into the real world, people want to connect with you. So I'm sure you've seen it like when you go to events, you're like, Oh, I listen to you all the time. And, yeah, it's not that we're any close to being famous, but I feel like, yeah, it's good to meet you. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
we get people often that will say, we'll start talking to us at shows, and they'll start telling us, you know, an episode that to listen to. And you're, we're sitting here looking at them, going, like, do we do we meet you? Did? How do we know you? And then we'll and finally, I know I've said it a couple of times, like I'm so sorry. I don't, I don't remember meeting you in there. Oh no, no, I just listened to your show. But they feel like they know you so well. And so it's kind of neat to like connect with people on that level that feel like you're open and you're transparent enough that people feel a connection to you. Because I think that's again, goes into hospitality. It's what we want. We want to make connections with people. Yeah, I

Steve Turk  
love it. I think it's very cool. I like meeting these people. At first I had to, like, train myself just like, thank them and shake their hand. What's your name, how long you've been listening, thanks for being a part of it.

Alex Husner  
So with all the business owners that you've interviewed this year, just kind of in the show in general, what are some takeaways that you've learned, or maybe something that you hadn't thought about from, from the perspectives that you've heard.

Steve Turk  
What I like seeing is that things evolve. So you may have a certain plan, but then opportunities arise that you go and do, and it happens to work, but it all happens with a clear vision, right? Like they know what their core values are and what their mission is, so it allows them to make decisions quickly on certain things, right? Because it's easy as a business owner, like I did this the first time around, to say yes to anything. It's like, yeah, I want to do this, and I want to do that, and all of a sudden you're just doing way too many things, and you've forgotten the actual mission. So now with my companies is we have a clear mission. We have our core values. We know what we're saying yes to, so when it does show up, we're ready to jump on it. And it may be a little bit different than we thought it was going to look like, but does it match all these things that we said we would want to do? Yes, all right, we're going to go do that. And so for me, it's just it's helpful to see that when you have the filter set, it's easy to make decisions really quickly and jump on those things. So I hear that from the successful business owners too. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
yeah.

Annie Holcombe  
So wanted to touch back. You mentioned that you guys, you're the because of the podcast, you've been able to branch out of just hotels and vacation rentals, and you're into a whole bunch of things. And you mentioned cruise ships, and that caught my ear. One, you're in the Miami area, so there's obviously cruise ships all over the place down there. But what kind of, what kind of, I guess, support does a cruise ship industry need that you can provide? I'm the cruise ship industry is fascinating to me. I've never been on a cruise. I just see it, and it's just like a floating city and all the things that they have to do. So I can't even imagine. I guess it's essentially similar to a hotel, but it's out on the water, and so you have to think of like being on an island and doing all the things, right? You

Alex Husner  
only have what you have.

Steve Turk  
I've walked it now with them, and I've talked to the big and small so I was lucky enough to talk to the Four Seasons yachts team that's going to be coming out soon. And then I was also able to talk to Royal Caribbean team and the princess team. And so what I learned, which is much harder than hotels, is that you have to have everything you need, because there is no like, Hey, I'm making a pit stop at this island to refit. I got some milk. Yeah, when you're out, you're out, but they have their data so dialed in, like, they know all of us. They know when you sign for cruise, they know every single guest. They know their names, they know their ages. They know for a lot of times, if you made those reservations ahead of time at certain restaurants, they know what people are going to order, like to the plate, and so they have all this technology now to where they can just, like, lock in and already predict what they're going to have. Is amazing to see, especially in food and beverage and drinks and entertainment, like, they know how and where people will be. And what's really interesting now is Royal Caribbean has figured out, Hey, we were dropping people off on other islands and not collecting any of that money. So we're going to create our own island. And they created their cocoa K Island as just another filter to Yeah, give good service, but also collect as much revenue as possible, and have it dialed in. Again, they know we're going to collect a million dollars. Dollars today when this ship unloads? Yeah, just amazing to see how they figure it out with technology and data, what people need and when they need it. It's It's pretty awesome. So that's one thing I've seen from the large cruise ships and then the smaller ones. So with Four Seasons yachts is going to do is going to be unbelievable. If you're willing to pay, the ticket price is high to get on, but if you're on, it's like having your own, your own yacht, because the rooms are so big and the staff is going to be for you, and they'll know everything about you before you get on. If it's anything like the hotels, I'm sure you've maybe stayed in a couple of them, yeah,

Steve Turk  
those are awesome. Yeah, that's gonna be amazing.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah. That's a really interesting point that you just made, though about them. The cruise ships know every person that is on that ship, so very different than in vacation rentals and hotels that you know the reservation holder, but you don't know who else is, is, you know, in that accommodation. So, I mean, yeah, I think looking at the data that they're able to collect, it's got to be fascinating. Yeah, all

Steve Turk  
inclusive are kind of close, right? All Inclusive hotels, when you go to, like, down to the Caribbean or Mexico, like, you have to register, yeah, yeah, but it's not as dialed in as a cruise ship, because you can't leave, like, you're you're on here, yeah,

Alex Husner  
they need to make sure that they don't lose you. So medically important, I think,

Annie Holcombe  
I think of our friend, Justin Ford from breezeway, and, like, the safety aspect of it. And I think that the amount the safety person for a cruise industry, like for a cruise line, has to be the most detail oriented person on that planet, just to think through every scenario of somebody who's on a cruise. Because, like, I mean, let's just face it, I think that when people go on vacation. Sometimes they leave their brain in the car, and they make a lot of bad choices. You know, not necessarily intentionally, but they make some bad choices. But to make bad choices 1000s of miles from a hospital or from land, I mean, to be able to think through those scenarios, that's gotta be, that's gotta be truly, truly fascinating to learn from, yeah. I

Steve Turk  
mean, it's got to be hard. I mean, I've worked on South Beach, here in Miami Beach, and some of the hottest hotels, and I called it always the check in Friday. I was like, who's going to black out drunk here today that we have to ask? Oh, yeah, every single Friday, every hotel I worked on in Miami Beach was like that. So yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
like, spring break, you take bets and see what it's

Steve Turk  
like. Hey, they're not used to the heat and drinking and they're having a good time, and the vibe is right. And, you know, it all starts getting taken away, but no one's jumping off, you know, the ship like it sometimes happens.

Alex Husner  
True, true. Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. We'll have to get Justin Ford's take on that maybe he's got some insights as he's been on so I'm interested. I mean, when you made the decision to go into short term rentals that you've been in the hotels for so long, I mean, did you, did you study a lot? Did you, were you already interested in that accommodation sector, or was it just kind of like, it sounds like a good thing people are making a lot of money. I'm going to give it a whirl.

Steve Turk  
Well, we dabbled. So here's what the real truth here. So when I had the staffing company, we dabbled a little bit. So like in 2016 I had a staffing company four years. So in 2016 two years in, I started getting a lot of calls from Airbnb owners like, Hey, can you send us a housekeeper? Can you send us someone to help clean this place? Can you help us fix this place? And we kept saying, No. It was over and over and over and over and over again. And so then finally, I was like, You know what? Let's just see what this is about. This is like now 30 phone calls. We're going to say yes. So I took a housekeeper and myself and a manager, and we went over to help clean this guy's apartment, which was a pain in the butt. We made $75 cleaning fee, and it took forever to get the place clean. Had no supplies. I was like, this does not make any sense, but if we can manage it for this guy, he doesn't know what he's doing, this would be pretty cool. Yeah. Oh, wow. And so this is 2016 and so I remember walking into my staffing companies, like eight managers. We had 700 employees out on the streets for hotels. Wow, right. Crazy number. And I was like, guys, today we're gonna start to explore vacation rentals. And they looked at me like, I had three heads.

Alex Husner  
You keep working on what you

Steve Turk  
were working on. And I just started calling the listings of villas in Miami. And one of them picked up the phone, and I made the pitch of who we were and what I do, and didn't have a contract or anything like that. He's like, that. He's like, All right, come over here today and talk to me. So I went over there was a 12 bedroom villa in Miami. Walked in in a suit, because I was always in a suit walking in hotels, and he's in his bathing suit in the pool. He's like, why should I hire you? We're hotel people, like, we know what we're doing. We have our own staffing companies, all of our staff. And he said, Okay, send me your contract. And so that night, my dad's an attorney. I was like, let's go. I need something. And I gave it to him the next day, and he reread everything. He's like, Yeah, this looks good. Here are the keys. And within a day, I had a keys to a villa. I had no idea what to do with I just knew I needed to get it on Airbnb. Wow, oh my that's how it started. So we built a little. Old book of business of like, eight and 10 homes. And when I sold it, the company really didn't have interest in it, that book. They just wanted the staffing company. And one of my employees, Victor Faria, said, I'm going to start my own Airbnb business, because he liked it, Airbnb management business, and he took a lot of the clients, he convinced them to go with him. And so he started, and I had a non compete for three years, and so I couldn't do anything. So when I did get out of the hotel, I didn't have a block on and he was still going. So that's how it all kind of came together.

Alex Husner  
Wow. And so is he your business partner still? Now he's my business

Steve Turk  
partner, yep. Wow. The co founders of Daniel management. So that's kind of how it took shape.

Alex Husner  
That's a great story. I can just visualize that in my head of you showing up in your

Steve Turk  
Australian, Australian businessman drinking beer in the middle of the afternoon. I'm just like sweating next day, yeah?

Annie Holcombe  
Well, Miami, yeah.

Steve Turk  
When I got back to my office, it was actually Victor's third day working for me, and I remember calling the team into the conference room. I said, All right, well, we have a 12 bedroom villa. What we're gonna do with this?

Alex Husner  
Wow, wow. Yeah, I think a lot of people, uh, assume that's how easy it is to get properties to come onto a manage management program if they're not in the business, Lucky. That's an anomaly. I would say,

Steve Turk  
yeah, it's complete. Like, that's still the easiest one to this day, yeah,

Alex Husner  
oh yeah, putting fish in a barrel right there. But how have you grown the portfolio since then? I'm sure you're not just going to people's houses every day. So

Steve Turk  
that doesn't work. We were doing that a little bit. It was a lot of referrals. So our business is a lot of referrals. We've seen so people who know people that come through, we just redid our website because we needed to really get it up and running for more leads, because there's so much competition. Now, everyone seems to have, like a little book of three, four or five homes. Everybody's now, you know, if you saw Brian Chesky talk about CO hosting yesterday. Now there's 20,000 co hosts that are all competition for all the property managers as well, and he didn't speak lovingly about property managers, right, saying co hosts can do it better and get higher ratings. So for us, we know we got to be on the offensive. So we are actively marketing to people. We're hosting realtors and explaining to them how things work and paying them commissions. We're working with anyone that will listen to us, that's in the real estate industry. And then we've had to pivot a little bit, because in different markets, the housing rates are so crazy. People bought homes thinking that they could cover their ad with the ADR, and they're not able to. And then they come to us for help. And I was like, nope, short term rental, but we could help you with long term. And so now we do short term and long term. So we have a team in place to do both. So if you want to pivot, we'll help you get there. And if you want to stay in short term, we can do that, or we can turn it on and off depending on which way you want to go. So we're able to do both of those services. I think

Annie Holcombe  
that's smart to be able to be able to handle that, because I think that you know your to your point, you're going to have different owners that come in through the system. The system, and some of them are going to have different mindsets. And being able to handle all types, it gives you a diverse portfolio. So you're not necessarily beholden to, like, the seasonality of of a market, not that Miami has as much seasonality as other places. But, I mean, definitely, you know, definitely helps you isolate for that. So how many properties are you actually under management right now? Right

Steve Turk  
now, we have 51 and we are majority in Miami. Then we're up from Hollywood, Fort, Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, South Florida. And then now we have Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina. And we just bought our first property our own in South Carolina, because we saw that that was actually a market that's doing very well for us because we were managing someone's home like this is actually doing pretty good. So we could

Alex Husner  
find here, which, okay, yeah, yeah, that's funny. You're the first a second person this week that's been talking about North Charleston, and I'm in Myrtle Beach, so not too far from there. But it is definitely an up and coming area. I mean, you just, you can't get anything more into Charleston and into Mount Pleasant. It's so overcrowded, but it's exciting because we

Steve Turk  
are managing Mount Pleasant. So we have homes active in Mount Pleasant, and so we have two models for short term, so we can do your full management and we charge a percentage rate, or we can do it basically at half price and do your marketing and messaging and pricing and take care of everything online, and then coordinate with a vendor that you've given to us. So whether it's your housekeeper, engineer, like, we'll take care of that. All that for you. So we charge less for that, and that's how we've been able to grow some places outside the state. But we saw him doing that in Mount Pleasant like, this is a great this person's printing money here. You know, let's find a spot up here, because we can't find it in South Florida. Doesn't make sense. Yeah, and we're going to start doing it that, and we're going to start working on some unique experiences. I've been talking about glamping for a while. We finally got approval after a year and a half, so we can talk about that some more, too, if you'd like, oh,

Alex Husner  
wow, yeah. Where are you? Where are you looking to get involved in that,

Steve Turk  
right outside Miami. So it took us a year and a half and. So I'll give a couple of details. We don't want to give everything away, but the this is, the idea is that farmers down here struggling, and they can't do much with their farmland. They passed an agro tourism bill, but there's nowhere to stay, and you can't build permanent structures. And so like, All right, we are going to come in. We're going to put these luxury Safari tents with air condition and bathroom. We're going to give a percentage of the sales to the farmers so they're happy. We're bringing people to a unique place so they can see what the farm is like and still be in nature. And then hopefully they will buy stuff from that farmer while they're there, and we'll create some unique hospitality experiences while they're there. So I'll give more details as it starts coming. But we just got approved after a year and four months, I didn't think it was going to happen, but after a lot of after a lot of money spent on attorneys and zoning and all these things that we got, we got the Okay,

Annie Holcombe  
wow, the glamping is hot. Look at that. A lot you were just saying, like

Steve Turk  
someone could buy a $600,000 studio, or I can get six tenths for that and make way higher than that studio.

Alex Husner  
So yeah, and are you doing at rev share with the farmer also, yeah, so you're

Steve Turk  
gonna get a percentage of the nightly rep.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah. Wow. That's

Alex Husner  
really interesting. I don't know a whole lot about glamping, but is that common in other areas that people are doing that with farmers, or is this kind of a new concept? Wow? Okay,

Steve Turk  
awesome. I think there's people who have farms and they're like, you know, like Bed and Breakfast owners, and in owners. I just gave a speech to a bunch of them out in San Diego, and so they opened my a lot of them are, like, on historic farms, and they have cool things going on, but there's not many that are have this model. I don't know any. And so if it works, I want to go to as many farms as possible. Wow,

Alex Husner  
wow. I love it. I love it. Well, Steve, you and I were on, or you were on a panel that I was hosting actually at favor in Orlando about a couple months ago, and it was about, you know, guest experience. And I think you guys have done an incredible job of really creating that for your guests. But tell us a little bit about, like, how you've taken what you did in the hotels and just kind of transition that into the experience that guests have when they book with with tangy, yeah, you

Steve Turk  
did a great job, by the way, getting us all.

Alex Husner  
I almost got hit by the drone, which was alarming. But for listeners

Steve Turk  
that were not there, there was a drone flying around in the middle of a panel that was so loud. I was like, right

Annie Holcombe  
on here, hopefully

Steve Turk  
we got a cool shot at all of all of us. Look, we in hotels. Know, here's what we have, is we have a daily lineup every single day with our team to talk about who's checking in and who's checking out. So we know everyone is coming in, everyone's coming out before they even get to us. We want to get them excited, because as soon as someone books like, I just booked a vacation in that first 36 hours, you're like, the most excited. So we try to hype them up. We have a playlist that we've made that they can watch on YouTube or listen to so that they can start getting in the mood. We put that on actually when they arrive at the house, so it's like, hooked in their brain if they listen to it. Yeah, that's so cool, right? I love that. So when they walk in, they've got that we think about the scent of a place when you walk into and you know, we want to make sure that we're hitting all of your senses, but before we even get there, we're asking you why you're coming. I'm sure a lot of people do this, but we actually act on those things. So if you're coming for our celebration, we're going to celebrate you. If you have allergy there, if you have a kid, or you have a pet, whatever it might be, we're setting it up for you so that we're already anticipating your needs. We want to make sure that we are thinking about you and you feel like we were genuine when you arrive, like, all right, we thought about you. We anticipate you were coming. If you're celebrating something, it's something heartfelt. It's not just, oh, here's a bottle of champagne, like we actually write out something for them that's personal. And so that sets it off good already. Now we got to try to try to get to the next level. Is we really hope in that first four hours, if we don't hear from them, we're in good shape, because we've anticipated everything that they need. But if, for some reason, we don't, we have to jump on it that same day as fast as possible, and our team has to respond within three minutes. That's our time for our receptionists, and we have competitions running to push them to stay in that if they're not in three minute response time, then we have separate talks with them and we see why we're not doing it. But that is our goal. So anything that happens in that first four hours, any issues that first day, are settled and taken care of, just like it would be in a hotel. Because for a lot of people like all right, I'll get to you tomorrow, right? I can't get to you today. And then, really just taking care of them while they're there, whether they need massages or a rental car or a yacht or they want to set up a party, if the party is allowed in that home, will help organize those things for them. So really, just anticipating what they need, making sure where they have it, because a lot of people don't want to see us once they check in, right? Yeah, if they do see us, we're looking sharp. We're branded, yeah, looking like we're official. We're not just showing up in a T shirt and shorts. So someone they can trust. So a lot of trust factors we want when we're taking care of people.

Annie Holcombe  
One of the things that I remember you introducing, I want to say. It was, maybe it's been over a year, I think was the coffee, and that was part of, like, your branding, and doing the coffee with right over here, you

Steve Turk  
can see it on the show, yeah.

Annie Holcombe  
And, um, yeah. So tell us a little bit about how that came to because I think it's fascinating that you took something that I know, like, when, whenever we stay somewhere that's always, like, the first thing my husband's, like, is there a coffee maker? Do we need to go buy pods? Do we need to bring, like, just things like that? And I think you, you kind of answered a problem everybody has, but you made it unique and customized it, and then and you have a revenue stream from it. So it's brilliant. Yeah,

Steve Turk  
we were just like, man, we're buying a lot of coffee from Starbucks, you know, like, we're spending a lot of money here. And I just started thinking, I was like, This coincided with something that was going on here in Miami, where we have a place called Biscayne Bay, and the Bay had a big fish kill. All the fish started dying, and no one knew why, and so the whole place stunk of dead fish. And my kids were like, what's going on? We live right by the bay. Now. We got to do something. I can't just let this thing fall apart. And so I was drinking coffee overlooking the bay, and I said, I'm going to start a coffee company, and we're going to donate 10% of sales to help save Biscayne Bay, right? And I knew coffee people from when I worked in hotels, and so I went to the roasters, and I was like, Look, I want to do this. I want to make my own blend. And they said, Let's do it. So for me, I enjoy making things. And so we created this awesome bag that looks like a vintage Park poster. So like, if you look at it, it looks like a park poster from the national parks. And we created Biscayne coffee, and the first client was tangy management, get the percentage of it, and all the coffees in there has a little part of the story by the coffee, so guests understand what it is. And if they like it, they get a discount. They can take the bag with them. And so all of a sudden, you started getting visitors buying our coffee from around the country, and we ship it across the United States, which is great, and it just was something that we were able to build in. It's not the biggest money maker, but it's like a story that we can tell within. They feel like they're getting something local. We're donating money to help save the bay in our community, and so I just like that whole circle of the story that we're actually doing something that's good, and the coffee's really good. I drink it every

Alex Husner  
morning. That's so cool. It really just like touches, all the points there too. I love that. How did the guests buy the coffee? Is there something in the property that that points them to the link? So,

Steve Turk  
yeah. So on the back of the bag, there's a QR code, but also in the property, they get a discount that says tangy. You hit tight. So I'll tell listeners here, you can use these mentor or Tangen, you'll get 10% off of your coffee when you order online. It's all done online, and it's fulfilled from the roaster, straight off to the guests. I guess you want to go buy some coffee. You see, did we lose her? Oh, did we lose her? Oh my gosh, we lost her.

Annie Holcombe  
Well, that's not good.

Steve Turk  
Well, keep talking. Tell us that's all right,

Annie Holcombe  
we can pause, yeah, that's weird. That's happened to her before, then

Unknown Speaker  
she just disappeared.

Annie Holcombe  
That is true. What? Oh, my gosh, maybe it's you, Steve, so you're but you're doing the coffee with your brother, right?

Steve Turk  
My brother made the video that helped. Oh, okay,

Annie Holcombe  
okay, I knew somehow your brother was tied into it in the beginning. Oh, hold on, Alex. Is calling me.

Steve Turk  
My computer died. Hello, my heel doesn't have caught

Alex Husner  
in the wire. It's like, very touchy. So let me just give me a second. Okay, all right, bye.

Annie Holcombe  
She said her heel got caught in the wire. She She said she could still hear us.

Unknown Speaker  
Hello, are you there?

Annie Holcombe  
Oh my gosh, that's so funny, so funny. Yeah, so

Steve Turk  
my brother, he's great. He's great at creating. He's

Annie Holcombe  
a marketing person.

Steve Turk  
He does video, 3d renderings, like so many cool things. Now he's creating for people. Cool. Yeah, but he helped me really, kind of just get the 3d renderings of stuff that I was using at one point, but he created the video like he's just like a unicorn, because he can do video his own editing. Great music. DJ for a long time. Oh, wow, yeah, he puts it all together, which is very rare. It's

Annie Holcombe  
funny, my husband's like that. I mean, he wasn't a DJ, but he's got a good, good sound for music, but he's He can do all the things. And it's funny because he'll always say, Well, I'm too old. And, like, there's so many technologies, like, once you have that creative ability where you can just think way beyond what everybody you know, someone comes to you with an idea, and he runs with it six different directions. And there's always, like, a great nugget in whatever he does. And I just find people that can think on that plane, just so amazing. I just, I have a little bit of creativity, but not at that level. So just very envious of that. Are you all

Alex Husner  
serious? Yeah. And so reason 8,000,005 Annie why I need to get a new computer. It's you even barely touch. Touch the wires down there and that happens, or my mouse goes, and I'll be in the middle of the meeting, and I can't move anything up. Sorry about solo. Told you, I'm gonna get a mic. We've been

Annie Holcombe  
trying to talk her in a Mac front I've always had max. And she's like, No. And then we were in Italy, and one of the guys that works for boom, he he was like, Why do you have that PC? Like, what is she's like, You should not be using this. Nobody uses those anymore.

Alex Husner  
Okay, let's pick up on the fresh

Annie Holcombe  
talking about his

Steve Turk  
coffee. We finished on the coffee, and then you the coffee.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, how they buy it? Did we finish? Yeah, QR, code and then yeah, you were talking

Annie Holcombe  
about how to get it. How to Yeah. So listeners, mentor,

Alex Husner  
we'll just start again from I'll ask you, how do people, how do we guess buy the coffee, just in case, to be safe, yep. So how to guess? Throw this up. Yeah. So how did guests buy the coffee? Steve, is there something in the unit that prompts them to go to a website, or what does that look like?

Steve Turk  
Yeah, I love that question. So we want them to be buying it. And of course, we have something small in the units that tell the story of Biscayne coffee, something small because we don't want collateral all throughout the house, but also on the bag, it has a QR code that tells the whole story. So for some reason, that piece disappears on the back, there's a QR code that shows them what's going on, and then we tell them too. So in the post pre arrival, and also the post that they can buy that coffee when they leave and they get 10% off. So if listeners are listening, you can use tangy to get 10% off is the promo code or mentor, so from the hospitality mentor. So there you go. Listeners,

Annie Holcombe  
oh, cool. What a great Christmas gift, though, too. Now that we got the holidays coming up, perfect time to buy something and do some good for Biscayne Bay.

Steve Turk  
You see, with every sip of coffee, you're doing good. So

Alex Husner  
I love to that you collect so much data on your gas? I mean, that kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier on the hotels and cruise ships side, but the different details about why they're coming, and their specifications, if it's allergies or anything like that, but I don't think I would say the majority of property managers are not collecting anywhere near that amount of information. But what are you using to harvest that's at or using, I know you use guesty as your PMS, but are using something on top of that. For us,

Steve Turk  
we're loading as much information in there as possible. So that's like a big thing for us, and we challenge our team. So this is something I learned when I worked at man oriental hotels. You have to have your team doing it. Can't just be a person. And so whether it's our housekeeper, our engineer, our receptionist, we have people collecting information. And so we make it a game. So whoever has the most information collected, they win a gift card at the end of the month. And so the way it works, like if you're in a place and you see that there's golf clubs, they may like golf, right? And if you see they bought wine and they have several bottles of it, maybe that's a wine they like, and we can make a mention of it in the comment card, right? It's something that's very simple that they can communicate. We use Slack, and we have a channel where we're putting all that into and then we put it into the information. So then we do come back and they like golf, maybe we happen to buy a golf magazine for them, right? And say, hey, you know, welcome back. Here's the golf magazine for you. And so those are like little touches we learn in the hotel that doesn't cost really anything, but will wow them so much just by having that data and information when they're gone.

Alex Husner  
Wow, that's incredible. Well, that's a great tactic, too. I love that. It's like a competition for your staff. How do you actually tabulate how many pieces of information that they've brought back? Hopefully

Steve Turk  
it's real information they're giving us, but it's just submitting. They put it on Slack, right? Yeah, they upload it to slack. We have a channel just for guest preferences. And it'll say, you know, Steve Turk came, has two children, and, you know, they whatever they saw in the house, or maybe they asked them for something. Or if they ask us for something, that's the easiest, right? Like, Hey, can you make sure that you don't use chemicals when we're coming to clean, use something natural. We'll make a note of that. Like there's so many different things that you can do. If it's their birthday, we save their birthday right? Their anniversary. We save their anniversary so you can just start building that book. And you know, our hope is that more and more regular customers. That's why we redid our whole website, so it's easier to book directly with us. Yeah, the

Alex Husner  
website looks great, by the way it looks really thank you. Yeah, we

Steve Turk  
just launched it two weeks ago. So excited about it. Some tweaks on it we gotta make, but we love it, and that's our goal, is to really start driving that. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
oh, that's great. That's great. Well, one topic that we we definitely cover quite a bit on this show, and we just got back from Italy, it was one of the hot topics over there, is regulation. And I know Miami certainly had some some different regulations going on down there, but maybe tell us a little bit about how that's affected you, or if it has affected you and the properties that you're

Steve Turk  
going we we have thought about it strongly, because we saw what happened in New York. It could just be you're done right, like you can build a whole business, and then it's game over. And. And we understand that that could happen in our city, too, if they wanted to. I think we're a little safer here in Miami because they're building so many short term rental friendly buildings, like just outside my door, there's 24 cranes outside my office door, and there's going to be 6000 I think, 300 units that are all short term friendly just built in the core of downtown. Wow, so that's the hot thing right now here, and I feel bad for a lot of these people, because they're not going to be able to make the money they need to cover those mortgages that they're building sold these rates that are not true, which I can if you want to dive into that more, but it's we look at it, and that's why we got flexible on our offerings, because we knew if we were just short term rental, then we're just that. But if we can offer some long term, which we've had some clients, pivot to that, we're taking care of them as a long term client now. And so we're also getting now into hotels, helping hotels short term rentify their rooms, I'll say, like putting some things in their room so that we can help promote them on Airbnb as well now. So we're launching that next week with our first big client. Oh no, I'm sorry. I

Annie Holcombe  
didn't mean to interrupt you on that interesting. You said brought that up because I was actually going to pivot over to that is. So my day job is with next packs, and so channel management. And so one of the things that we're seeing a lot of is hotel companies, traditional hotel companies, coming over to the vacation rental side of the business because they want to be part of Airbnb and VRBO and, you know, homes and villas. I mean, either all the all the things that you would think a traditional hotel would not want to be part of, but if they have suites, or they have a mixed use type property where they've got these villas that are part of a resort, that type of thing. So you're seeing more hotels come into kind of the VR space. But I wanted to ask you specifically about Miami, and I was at the skiff conference back in June, June, May time, and they were and we talked about the regulation in New York. And so one of the things that everybody will point to is, well, the hotel lobby in New York City is really, really strong. And I had always suspected that the hotel lobby in Miami was fairly strong as well, and I think it is, but I feel like they've done a better job at embracing and coexisting with short term rentals than a lot of other cities. So maybe, do you have any insight or any thoughts on why that is perhaps. Well, I remember

Steve Turk  
in 2016 when I started doing Airbnb and promoting it online, the head of the hotel Association started yelling at me, because she knew me from the hotel days. What are you doing?

Alex Husner  
And I said, we're the enemy. I

Steve Turk  
said, American Express just signed a deal with Airbnb. This is not going away. It was like that, yeah. So I'm jumping in on this, and it's going to keep growing, and hotels are going to have their own residences and short term rentals, I told her, and she's like, Nah, we're never going to do this. Now they do. And so more and more projects here, I think here's Miami Beach, ultra strong. They now have strong regulations there. You don't have a license, they're going to find you. I think it's like 20 grand a night. It goes crazy if you have illegal short term rentals. So it was popping up all over Miami Beach, they shut it down, and you have to have your license, and they check you just like a hotel, and it's almost impossible to get a short term license in Miami Beach, like, you have to fight really hard to get one. So they're very valuable. But in Miami, across the bridge, Miami is known for real estate. Like, that's what drives the industry. It's real estate hospitals and, you know, hospitality. And now we're trying to get some banking and some new industry. Here, we see a lot of people move to Florida during the pandemic, but condo hotels is gigantic here. That's what every building is. It's a condo Hotel. Yeah, they have to live together. And so there we're now in a place where condo hotels now have like, Highgate is very involved down here. Ainbridge is very involved down here, and they're trying to figure out how to work with condo associations, who I've talked to as well, to create rules in these buildings. Because now all of a sudden, you have investors buying up like 40 rooms, making their own mini hotel within a hotel. And so to see what's going on here right now. And so we're trying to work with some buildings to standardize it, because we are hotel people, we understand how to run it like a hotel, and we're not a realtor that's just trying to lower the rate as low as possible to fill it right? And so nothing bad to the realtors out there, but you don't know the revenue game, right? Like you have to set a floor so that everything drops to the bottom and they get Riff Raff and parties and craziness in the buildings. There's a reason you do certain things in pricing, but it's different than vacation rentals.

Alex Husner  
Mm, hmm, actually, Annie and I met at in Miami, at the atma conference back Gosh, what was that? 2019 I think we figured, or 2018 Yeah, somewhere around there, 17, 2017, 2018, somewhere. Yeah, it's been a while ad or BC, it was a long time ago. One of the main topics that atma discussed was, I mean, this is there the on site Property Management Association. It's a lot of those condo resorts that at that time and still, they were losing a lot of their inventory to off. Sites or individual owners that were renting on their own. But there was a hotel in Miami, the satai, that actually, like they won a big lawsuit that kind of was the set the standard for condo resorts going forward, of what you're able to say, as long as your bylaws are matched what theirs did or similar, that off site companies or individual hosts, they can't use the brand if they're putting their properties on Airbnb. You know, just different things like that. Always restrictions, of course, on amenities and things that guests can use if they're not using the on site program. But I'm interested down there now. I mean, has that changed at all? I mean, I feel like it's probably starting to

Steve Turk  
get stronger, right? So satai does a good job, because I always remember that they were getting hit hard because you think you're staying at the satai because you were staying at someone's home. And satai is a five star, five diamond brand that's Ultra celebrity, you know, enclave there that people go there for privacy, and all of a sudden it was opened up to, you know, everybody could stay there. You know, anyone can, but the rates were much lower than hotel rooms, and so it just threw everything off control that. But I saw it with a home that we were going to start with, or an apartment. I'm not going to name the place yet, because maybe we'll get back in there. But it was a family from South America. They were promised in this building that they could have their own short term rental and put it out themselves. They hired us to manage it for them. And normally we would say no to this size place, but it's a really nice building, and we thought, all right, it's a good opportunity for to get in. We got to the closing with them. The actual closing, we went with them. We walked the property, we signed with or they signed in front of us with the developer, signing off that everything looked good. Then we went to orientation. And so we went to orientation with the condo association, and we all sat down and they said, Oh, who are who are you? I said, I'm Steve, and this is Victor, where we're tangy. And they're like, What do you guys do? So we're a hospitality management company, and we're going to be working with this family here. And there's that, well, we don't know how to tell you this, but there's only one lodging license currently, and it's for the hotel that's here. Oh, wow, put your product into the hotel. And so then the owner, who had been waiting on this place for four years, because they bought it pre development, said, No, the whole time, you've been telling us for four years that we could do it ourselves, and we were that's what our plan is. We have an idea of what we want to do, so well you could. We just don't know when the other transient licenses are going to get here. So it's up to you on what you want to do, but you have to sign today what you want to do.

Alex Husner  
Oh my gosh, yeah, a whole lot of options there.

Steve Turk  
So I looked at her, and I said, Look, sign the paper, you have a year contract, and then get back to us in a year. They've been there now three months, and they can barely cover their mortgage because the rates that they were told of the six and $700 they're getting 150 202 50 on their unit. So I just feel bad, because there's so many people they're gonna get crushed like this. We've seen it like we were. We came into a project where they hired us to be their management company, and they said, Hey, can you give us the comp set? Because legally, as salespeople, we can't give what the rates are going to be. And so we told them, you're going to be in the 250, $300 rate. And they're like, we can't show them this. I'm like, why not? This is what the rates will be like. Well, it's not high enough. You're going to make them higher. We're not going to make it higher. Oh, wow, yeah. And we can't work with us, right then we don't work together. And that place sold in a neighborhood that is never going to make the rates that they say they're going to get. And so I'm curious to see what this bubble will be like, because you're dropping all these units into one area pretty much So anyhow, that's my warning for all of you out there, yeah.

Alex Husner  
My gosh, yeah. And we hear that everywhere that it's like, yeah, people that have bought in the last few years, just the projections that they're getting from these realtors are very far off. And it's not this passive income or just massively wealthy income type business that they thought that they were getting into here. And unfortunately, that's not just the way the world is right now. There's so much competition on Airbnb. The supply is just through the roof. I think Airbnb is really out swooped VRBO a lot this year. So it's like, that's kind of becoming the, the only main channel, and really hard to compete, especially in areas like that where, my gosh, that's a ton of inventory to be adding to the market too, once that building gets completed, and

Steve Turk  
a bunch of hotels. So the hotels know, and so now they're like, All right, we really need to step up our game, and then the offerings that we're giving at these hotels, because these places that it's just, it's, it's going to be interesting to see what happens, because I've been on both sides, and I know what's going to kind of shake out once these are all done. It's going to be the people who own the condos that are suffering because am I going to stay at Steve's place, so I don't know, or am I going to go directly across the street and stay at the Intercontinental for the same price and get great service that I can count on, and get my points, mixed points, and all that stuff. So yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
we saw the same thing, I think, at Myrtle Beach. Saw it too, Panama City Beach, like, just all that built up. But I but one thing I think that is good is that there's enough of us that have been through both sides that we can give kind of, like those cautionary tales of like, what's going to happen. And, you know, one thing I'm seeing, and you brought it up in the beginning, is like, you know, working with the realtors. And you know, realtors can be your best friend as much as they can be your biggest enemy. But if you, if you bring them in the fold early and are there to help them navigate how to talk to people, and yes, let's for sure they're going to sometimes do whatever they have to do to make a sale, and it might not end well for somebody down the road, but if you know that in the beginning, you can help navigate through that. And I think that that's where we talk it like, VR, ma level, like, you know, how do we do more of that? Collaborative with realtors? Because the realtors is, the Realtors Association is the largest active like Association. They have a lot of pull. They have a lot of ability to get in front of people, and if we can work with them instead of against them, and creating these like walls between the two sides of the business. I think we could do better things. But, you know, going to the the Airbnb conversation with the CO hosting, I mean that that obviously has drawn a very loud line in the sand. And you know, to management companies as to how they feel about professionalized management companies. So it'll be interesting to see where we are six months from now. And I think Miami, with all this inventory, is going to be a really big case study for how that plays out. Yeah, I think

Steve Turk  
there's just a lot of people who are going to be in some pain. And a lot of these people buying are wealthy people, and this is like, third and fourth homes for a lot, but there's a hand, I say handful. There's a lot of people that are, like, betting on this to be a business for them. And so they come to us. I was like this. I tell them, do not buy this. They bring the opportunity to buy this one. Yeah, do that, right. You're not going to make your money back on a million dollar studio in a condo Hotel. Yeah?

Annie Holcombe  
God no, yeah. Well,

Alex Husner  
hopefully people at least appreciate you being honest with them too. Because some management companies where they say, Sure, buy it. We'll take it on the program,

Steve Turk  
because we know we're going to take it and be like, Where's my money? I

Alex Husner  
was like, Yeah, but that's that's

Annie Holcombe  
a good manager, though, that can recognize that it's not about the the quantity, it's the quality, and it's the quality of the management too. I mean, you don't want to, like, set everybody up for failure, because it's not only going to hurt you, it's going to hurt going to hurt the owner, it's going to hurt your staff in the long I mean, through the process. I mean, it's going to be painful for everybody in

Steve Turk  
the long run. We've definitely lost opportunities, but I just know that in the end, there's going to be other management companies. They're just going to fall apart because they cannot. Sometimes don't care. They're just going to take their commission and move on and they'll just keep churning people through the system, but that gives us a bad name. But for the ones that really want to come around, we're we're doing it the right way.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not sustainable, doing it that way. I am curious, though, too, on the realtor side, what have you seen that's worked well, and the relationships that you've built with realtors within your community to get them to refer business,

Steve Turk  
we've educated them a lot. Like, they'll come to us and we'll spend time with them, like, invest time in them to educate them what to look for. So if somebody says we want to do something that's short term rental friendly, here's where you should be looking. Here are the zones, because they don't understand sometimes what's legal and not legal to do. And so we do that. We offer commissions to them that are pretty healthy and ongoing, and we're just doing now, we're organizing a dinner for a select amount of realtors. We're gonna take like, 14 of them out to have dinner, educate them, make sure they understand what's going on, and hopefully they'll refer us and stuff. But we really want to be a value to them. And then, on the flip side, when we start doing this long term rent, we have our core Realtors like, hey, yeah, we're doing long term. We need you to go find somebody for us to place in here, and you get that as a normal, yeah, yeah.

Alex Husner  
I love that. I love the dinner idea. I think that's great. I've heard a bunch of companies that they'll do. They'll drop off, you know, breakfast and do kind of or like, a lunch and learn type thing. But anything that you can do to stay in front of those groups and just show them a little extra love, it goes a long way with the companies that are adding the most inventory that I talk to, it's because they've got great realtor relationships. I mean, you need to do them, yeah?

Steve Turk  
It's hard now, it's hard to get places, and so that's why we're like, All right, we gotta get our own build our own things, yeah? But a good core of our business is still that traditional management of short term rentals,

Alex Husner  
yeah, yeah. I'm

Steve Turk  
excited to see this hotel part. Yeah, the hotel part. I'm excited to see how we can help them make a couple tweaks that are low cost tweaks to get some higher end results by getting some more eyes on their property. But it's going to be interesting to see, because there's a couple companies doing it that I've seen now, because I remember, I put it out there on LinkedIn. You probably saw that just to see how, yeah, earlier, yeah. Use LinkedIn all the time to source data and information. So we figured out a couple of things. We're going to see how we do it. There's no clean way to do it yet. It's kind of a hacked together right now. So we'll see how we do

Annie Holcombe  
it. Steve got a really great, you got a really great demo. First, like, structure for your business, and I think that you are doing all the fun things that you want to do, and which is, it's exciting, because every time I do talk to you, you're very excited about whatever is you're working on, and you're getting to do all the things. And I think that's what's you come from. The hotel side of the business, you generally have done a bunch of different things. And so now you can kind of like, hone in on the things that you have fun. And it's really exciting to see what you're doing. But I think Alex had another question before we get to wrapping up here.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, and I agree with what you just said, too, but we always ask our guest Steve, if what's one thing in the industry that you feel like people are not talking about enough?

Steve Turk  
So in the short term rental industry, what they're not talking about enough, I really think, is educating people who are trying to get into it, right? There's a lot of podcasts, and there's a lot of YouTube things out there, but there's a lot of people saying you can make a million dollars next year by following my program. And people jump in. And I've seen people jump in because we they come to us that do at least arbitrage, they lease a bunch of places, they get a bunch of furniture, and then all of a sudden they're done within a year because they could never cover the rent, and now they're just in a bad place. And so I just think if there needs to be a way for people to understand that are starting right, like you start in a hotel, you don't start as a general manager. It doesn't happen, right? Right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. The industry, you come into short term rental all of a sudden it's like, I've never been in here, but here I am. I'm now operating for vacation rental homes. And you know, you're not some people are not built for that. And then they realize it, like, we've had owners come to us and they're like, yelling at their guests, like we've seen the previous messages, and they told us, I'm like, What are you doing? Like, this is not how this works. Like, I have to go to their house at 11 o'clock because the toilets not working. Yeah, this is what hospitality is if you need to take care of them. And so I think it's really like, Go dabble a little bit before you jump in fully, because it can really be bad for you and for the industry, because a lot of people have that experience, like, I'm never staying at a vacation rental

Alex Husner  
again. Yep. Yeah. Well said, well said, we certainly agree with that. But Steve, it was such a pleasure to have you on the show today, a long time coming, and just wish you the best of luck for the rest of the year, rounding out 2024 but if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out? You can find me

Steve Turk  
on LinkedIn. I'm on there every day. I'm posting information every day. I'm connecting with people every day. So you can find me at six. So you can find me at Steve Turk there, and of course, if you want to stay with us, come stay with us. You can find us at tangy, mgm.com come stay with us. Check out the new website, and you can experience all the stuff we're talking

Alex Husner  
about. Yeah, buy some coffee. Well, 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. You.