From the Beach to the Mountains: Meaghan Moylan’s Journey to The Outpost Group

Alex Husner  0:01  
Welcome to Alex and Annie: the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie and we are joined today with Meaghan Moylan, who is the Executive Director of the outpost group. Meaghan, it's so good to see you.

Meaghan Moylan  0:48  
It's so good to see y'all. I'm so excited to be here.

Annie Holcombe

Oh, we're so excited to have you and learn more about you. And actually that's where we want to get started is just want your history and how you got to be in the vacation rental business and where you are now. Yeah,

Meaghan Moylan 

of course. Have you ever talked to anyone that's like I grew up wanting to go into vacation rentals and zero people, right?

Same thing happened to me. So after college, I wanted to move to Thailand to teach English and my sister got engaged. And she had a six month engagement and said you can't move to Thailand yet because I'm about to get married and you can't come back and forth for my bachelorette party and my well all the things. So I was at a bonfire one night in my hometown, which is Destin, Florida. And I know you're very familiar as well. I went into elementary, which I obviously haven't told you this. Yeah. And so I was back in my hometown waiting for my sister got married, I went to a bonfire and I met this girl who was raving about her job. And she worked in concierge for a company called 360 Blue and said, I love my job so much. It's the most incredible place I wake up so excited to go to work every day. And I thought, okay, I could probably I need to work here for six months before I move to Thailand. And so I applied for they had a funny name for it. I remember going on the website that night, and it wasn't reservationists like it was something cool. That meant reservationist. And I just didn't know what that meant, cuz I knew nothing about the industry. And I applied for the job. I did two interviews, and I got it. And I started on my first day in my cubicle in a call center with a headset on answering phone calls and thought like this is going to be amazing. This is the first time I've ever had a salary. This is the first time I've ever had health insurance, which I didn't need because I was 22. And it was still on my parents health insurance. But I never moved to Thailand. And I was there for six years and did a lot of different jobs. So I moved into the Revenue Department about two months later that I was running the revenue department, the reservations department about six months later, we went through several acquisitions grew to be close to 600 units. And I became the chief strategy officer for a couple of years. This point we were in Colorado, we were operating in Destin all the way to Panama City and had the majority of our units along 30. A stayed there. We got acquired in 2020 in September 2020. And I stayed for a year. And both of you. Have you guys worked for companies that have been acquired? Yes, right.

I don't know. I worked for companies that have acquired companies, but one that actually got acquired out. So yeah,

very different on the other side, right, which is hard in its own way. And being acquired is definitely harder. So it stayed for about a year. And things were just different, right. Of course, we had doubled in size, we had 1500 units total, there was a lot more like red tape and bureaucracy that existed that we just weren't used to working for such a small company. So I moved to Austin, Texas. And it was during the pandemic, I was like I have to get out. We're all working remotely anyway. And I decided to transition out and started looking for jobs on the vendor side. And on the property manager side had a couple of interviews. And I'm remembered that I had connected with this guy named Mackey, who owned a company called outpost in Jackson, I reached out to him on LinkedIn. And I was like, This is so bizarre, but do you need anyone to run your vacation rental company? And he said no. But I need someone to run my holding company that I want to create. Do you want to fly up to Jackson? So I flew up to Jackson, I did an interview for like three, four days and started the job came here for the summer to help open a coffee shop and then I never left and it's been almost three years. So it's very different life now that I used to have. I was telling you before we pressed play, I used to be very much in the trenches, even in a director of strategy role every day, like I was still communicating with guests and owners so frequently and now my life looks very different. That's so much strategic and partnership involvement on the vacation rental side, but it's given me a different perspective where I think so much of my decision making was almost skewed because I was so much in the trenches at 360 versus now having this it's skewed in a different way right where I have this different view on things and I honestly can't Imagine being in any other industry, which is funny because I think a lot of people are like, this is so exhausting part of me wants to get out every day. And I have not had I think maybe I felt that during COVID for a little bit, but the network that we have access to is so different I feel than any other industry. And I feel like I just like fall in love more in love with it every day. Wow,

totally agree with you there.

Alex Husner  5:22  
I mean, that's a meteoric rise, I would say even just in your days at starting at 360. Blue going from reservations to two months later. I mean, you're in a supervisory role. And then, you know, pretty quickly into a C suite role clearly shows you're very talented and learned quickly within the industry on fire, for sure. Yeah, what you wanted to do, and it gave you a pathway, which was great. Yeah, I can only imagine me being on the other side of the desk through an acquisition, it's got to be a lot of changes, and probably a lot of anxiety to companies come in. And they say things are going to be the way that one way. But you don't really know if that's going to happen. But it's been fun to watch 360 Over the years, I remember when you did expand out last. And that was only one of the bigger expansions at that time of a company that already had such a big foothold. And a lot of question marks at that point of, you know, can you be multimarket? Just because you're good in one market? Does that mean that you can go into another but I'm curious on that point of, you know, what were some of the challenges that when you were part of it, of that expansion that you got to witness, it was so hard.

Meaghan Moylan  6:24  
I look back at that time. So we had acquired the vacation rental side of St. Joe company in watercolor. And so we went from 225 units to 500 units overnight, and they were in our same location. And I remember 40 new employees showed up at our office literally the day after we closed and I sat in my office and I said to my coworker, it feels like we're having an alien invasion. And that took a very long time to integrate into our existing processes and team and I remember I was the director of revenue, and they had a director of revenue and just thinking like, what does this mean for me? And what am I going to do, and where's my place going to be in the company. And so when we approached this business with 20 units, 22 units may be in Colorado, two years later, I thought, like, Oh, my God, this will be a piece of cake compared to what we went through, like nothing will compare to that. And so Ashley, our CEO, said, I want you to oversee this new direction, this acquisition, I want you to go out to Colorado and see how we're going to run this company and how we're going to get more owners and how we're going to retain the owners that we have. And I was like, Okay, this is gonna be totally fine. And I went out to Colorado for a couple of weeks. And it was so hard. The team was like, Well, who are you guys? There's this hyper local culture, I think that exists in ski markets that I didn't understand until I moved to a ski market myself. And I you know, being from destin there already is this, like, if you're not a local if you're not from here, tribal? It's very tribal. It is like that on steroids in ski markets, right? Yeah, it is. But it is the barrier to entry. And I think it's why so many people don't go from beach market to a ski market unless you have a lot of money and a lot of time. And someone really strong that can run that destination for you. Like if you aren't born here, then like you're not from here. And that is very different, right. And so I think we were seen as outsiders and the owner was born in Breckenridge and had been there for many years and have very close familial relationships with the owners. And so retaining the owners that we did have was really difficult. And then the team dynamics and trying to figure out I don't know, like, when they're in the same destination as you getting on one system is very easy because you sit next to each other all day long, and they can talk to your director and they can talk to your maintenance director, when it's just me from this big gorilla company at the beach showing up in Breckenridge being like, Okay, well, we're going to take you off streamline and we're going to put you on escapia It seems very like well, what do you mean you haven't even looked at streamline? Yeah. You know, it was a lot of trial and error. And I remember I met Robin creegan. This was 2019 at a Varma connect in Breckenridge and I thought he was so cool. I'd never heard moving mountains before. I mean, this is six years ago, almost. I like started learning about his company thought he was so cool. And now years later, he says to me, like I remember when I met you, I thought, holy shit, this company 360s. Now in ski markets, what is this mean for me and moving mountains. And he felt intimidated and I was really intimidated. We laugh about it now but going multimarket like that is for a company that still like family owned and has limited resources versus like a massive company like Bokassa, you know, is it's very different. And it requires resources that you don't think that you need and money that you don't think that you need and time and I think patients more than anything, they look back now and I wish that I would have spent more time listening instead of talking. That's

a really, really valuable lesson to learn but I think that the one thing I always noticed was one you know, speaking of you go into market and you're so different and we try that at a company now is that I was at we tried to work in detail In a scene ended up just partnering with someone not necessarily buying anybody. But it was that it was the same attitude that I always had when people would come into Panama City Beach and be like, well, we're from, you know, Myrtle Beach, or we're from wherever. And they would tell you that this is how we do it. And I was like, well, first of all, that's not how you know. And I, when I went to Expedia, I had to say this a lot is that people don't take kindly to strangers coming in and telling them how to do their business. And especially if they come from like a bigger destination, or what the person coming in, perceives as a bigger destination, have more power and Panama City Beach. And the whole Panhandle dealt with that for a while where it was just like the panhandle of Florida, you don't know anything about business, go to Miami, they know what you know, other parts of Florida know, and they're like, we've been doing pretty well for ourselves the last, you know, 2030 years, but I can I can even imagine the differential between like ski and beach, because just the personalities and the markets are so inherently different, just on a regular day, not even just a business. Oh

my gosh, I remember being like, Well, what do you mean that you guys don't have on call? Like at night? What happens? And they're like, Oh, well, we have one maintenance technician who lives in Dillon 30 minutes away. And if he can't, because there's a snow storm, then like, we just have to tell the guests sorry. And I just like couldn't comprehend that right being from 360. We had 80 employees and so many resources at our fingertips, and there were 15 vendors, and then you go to Whiskeytown, and you have one electrician. And so I think just trying to go there and make our same model work and our same software and our same processes work because it had worked the first time, even if the company is larger, it was in the same destination. Like it's just such a different blueprint. And like I said, Yeah, I just don't think you see these, like smaller family owned companies making that switch from a beach to a ski market easily. And I 100% No, no, I look like look back at that time in my career. And I think that that was easily the most learning I've done in the shortest amount of time. I also was like, 2526 Oh, wow. Yeah, that was really,

Alex Husner  11:57  
yeah, well, like any sediment was a great lesson to learn. And I run into this all the time that companies that are in a beach market, that their goal is to expand into a ski market. And it's like, okay, I mean, let's really think through that, and what you know what that looks like, whether that's organically or which obviously, organic is very challenging for other reasons than what you're describing. But you know, acquiring company is also a challenge and you can't be still trying to run and grow your original location. And now open as a new brand, or as a with new ownership, another location like you really have to be thinking about where's the best time spent of where you can make the most impact and get to that point where if you're the owner, or the person that's going to be overseeing something like this, like, you've got to have your team in the first location completely dialed in that you're going to be able to take your attention away from it, and that business isn't going to suffer. Because I've seen this happen to that. It's like that first one is typically the bread and butter business that you don't want that to start declining or suffering because now your hands are off the wheel and you're looking into greener or smellier pastures.

Meaghan Moylan  13:02  
Yeah, right. Like that's the horse that's funding this, that was a challenge. And such a good point, like being prepared the leadership team, especially, you know, I think our middle management felt this director level chief level position being taken away, right, like, we're going out to Colorado, and we're working on this and this with the new team, and they need us a lot. So the middle management is kind of like wait, we wait like we need you to we have 10 times the properties. What does this mean for us? And it is? Yeah, it is a big challenge. There is something that comes with an acquisition, particularly somewhere across the country, that you have to be so dialed. And you have to have much deeper pockets than you think that you do. And just read like someone that you can trust in that destination that lives there permanently is the most important thing.

I can. It's interesting because I look back and the time that I was in property management, and that was always the thing. And I'm thinking about it now. Like it was always like you wanted a complimentary market so that your cash flow was balanced out. And so we always looked at it as an opportunity. Not just that, but whenever there was a hurricane in the Gulf, and then you know, for being in the Panhandle that just shuts everybody down reservations just cease to exist for that period of time, whether it's five days or seven days or whatever, and you're fighting against the Weather Channel, and you know, they're reporting and so like to think like, okay, where could we go that could balance this out. If that happens again, it was automatically the bouton markets, escape markets, but I think now and it's, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have this urban wasn't a thing. You know, you went to a city you stayed in a hotel, you always did that. But now there's so many more opportunities are so I wonder like, if in retrospect, like if we had urban destinations would we have decided to go like from Destin, Panama City where we go, oh, no, let's go to Nashville and like Atlanta, you know, like, would we do that instead of trying to go out west, so it'd be curious to see what people would say about that. But certainly the bigger world out there,

like the data that we had access to in 2019 versus what we have access to ensure Yeah, or is in I think this all the time. And I've never like been in this position to feel like the Olden like back in the olden days, I would literally assign someone to count the tape chart, like she would go and draw reports were wrong and escapee like there was something where it never worked correctly. And so this, her name was Whitney on the reservations team, she's probably listening to this being like, I remember those days, you would go in and manually count. And that's how we would understand what our occupancy was. And I don't know if you guys know this, but our sheets. So the director of marketing, and I were like counterparts when I was running the revenue team at 360. And we had like a menagerie of Google sheets that we had put together to track occupancy and ADR and RevPAR. And this is like when rev par was very first being talked about in the vacation rental space, I had gotten the like, I've done the Cornell hotel revenue management certificate. So I came back, it was online, I didn't go anywhere, I came back. And I started saying, like, oh, my gosh, we have to pull this, this and this. So we made these spreadsheets. And Jason was working on key data at the time. And so he took our spreadsheets and he sent them to the CTO who built them all in key data. And I remember them like unveiling the initial screens for key data to us. And it was like our exact spreadsheets in a software system and feeling like everything is going to change from here. And like what not amazing years will be completely different. Yeah,

Alex Husner  16:28  
the tie in with key data is super interesting, too, and that your menagerie of spreadsheets, you know, really a pretty big role and what that platform even is today, but I remember the days of counting things, but for us it was more going to our competitors websites and counting how many units that they had left or given weeks, you know, this was when it was still very much Saturday to Saturday. And it's like, Okay, this one, they've got 100 units today. And now through few more days later. Now, there they are. They're at 70. And they ran a promotion. So it's like it was always just looking at so many different variables. But And back then, you know, we we looked at the rates, but we didn't have any way of really at scale, comparing what we were doing to what they're doing besides just those obvious things of how many units do they have left? What promotions Have they given out and sent out over email? But those were the olden days, I guess you

Meaghan Moylan  17:19  
bring the olden days. I know I look. It's funny because it morphed over time, right? So now we're in this era where like, it's so easy to log into key data, or it's so easy to reach out to you have multiple vendors at your fingertips where it used to. We

Alex Husner  17:32  
almost have too much information now. Yeah. I

Meaghan Moylan  17:36  
mean, when I remember, it was like just beyond pricing. And if you wanted to pricing like you had to pay a percentage of revenue, and it was so expensive, and you had, like their prices, and you couldn't really do anything like that. And there was nothing else and just feeling like okay, well, we either do everything manually. And we have to have five people that do this, because we have so many units now and it takes all of our time, or we use be on pricing. And we they cost so much money. And now you can use be on pricing or price labs or real hazard like whoever you want to use, and you could use it in whatever you way you want to use. And you can negotiate on the field and you would think it would make it easier to do our jobs. And it does in some ways, but all the same pain points still exist. It

just makes it more complex. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. We always talk to people in lino Maldonado. We've had him on a couple of times. And he talked about it at one point talking about, you know, like the leaning tower of tech, but it's like a Jenga puzzle. It's like, there's all these pieces that go in, and if you move one, something else has to fall into its place. But is it the right thing, and it might not be the right for this property to my buddy, that market and it's just there. There's just so many pieces of the industry. But what I love about it is for good, bad or indifferent. I mean, COVID gave people the time, like Jason and working on key data and all the people that worked in kind of this tech space, the opportunity to make so many advancements that we leapt past the AI field, let the hotel world like we're so much further advanced in technology than they are and much more adaptable. You still look at large organizations that are running on the same software they've been running on since the 70s, like some of these big hotel brands. And it's like, how is that even remotely possible? I mean, vacationers didn't have technology in the 70s. So I guess it's a good thing. We don't have any legacy systems that are sitting around there. But yeah, right. knowledge we have is great technology. So I think we're all grateful for that part of it. It's just It's overwhelming.

Alex Husner  19:22  
I'm curious what you use now. Megan? I mean, seeing all the things that you have seen over the years, when you went into outpost? Did you walk in and continue? Did they continue using what they had? Or have you brought different changes to their tech stack? So

Meaghan Moylan  19:34  
we changed everything when I started. Which was not this probably decision that I would go back and maybe do a little staggering. I started So at 360 we had really wanted to switch off with escapia for years and years and years and we just looked into everything you possibly can imagine every software and we never got the chance because we got acquired and natural treats had their own proprietary tech though I felt like this was my own opportunity to finally switch and I had seen every property management like we had gone to Boise and looked at live runs streamline had come in town and we had spent couple days with streamline weeds had a million conversations with track and Wes at direct who loved the episode, by the way, and so outpost was using escapia. And we switched to track, we signed the agreement, like two months, maybe a month after I started, like immediately got it going, of course, like they came into town. They tried it with the team, we made sure it like fit with the team, and we had a six month implementation period. And then we also implemented breezeway, at the same time, work orders were being done previously, like in Asana, the task management system, and it was just something that had kind of existed, I talked about this on an episode recently, like when you have a small business, and what works for you at the time doesn't work for you when you grow rapidly. And I feel like you kind of wake up one day and you're like, oh my gosh, we used to have 10 units. And now we have 150. And it happened very quickly. And like we're still using the same software and the same processes that we had when we had 10 units because we haven't had time to do anything about it. And so we use this opportunity to like stop for a second and say like, Okay, we can't use Asana for work orders anymore, we actually need to track what we're doing and schedule appropriately and ensure that we're tracking these expenses in such a big cost center for a business, you know, maintenance, and how, essentially to like on the income side of things, we want to make sure that we're profitable on the housekeeping side, so huge fans of breezeway outpost was already using key data. But we really started to look into like, how can we utilize it even more than we already are? are we ensuring that we are like using the system to its maximum capability, which I think just kind of speaks to what we were talking about, too, with so many options and so much going on. A lot of the time you find yourself using 10% of the tech that you're paying for Where are you actually using every single feature that it has? Or have you at least looked into it to know if it's a good fit for you or not. And so yeah, we made those two big switches to track and breezeway from escapee and Asana. And we did switch all of our links or our locks over to links and had keyless entry, which was a big game changer, too. It was a lot in a short amount of time, like this is all kind of in the span of probably eight months. And then we took a very long break and took a very deep breath for a while. But yeah, it was like very quick and making sure that we I don't know, we were also experiencing the decline of the COVID Boom, like when I started, it was May 2021 was incredible. And so the decline hit Jackson sooner than everybody else I feel like and I don't know if it's because it's a hard market to get to. And so what was already difficult to travel here became even more difficult when people started traveling less and going over to Europe spending less money and so we'd made these massive investments in 2021 and 2022 We saw this massive decline in reservations which really led to this like scare for a bit yeah,

Alex Husner  22:54  
and a lot of change management that I'm assuming you probably learned a good bit about that during that 360 days and those different stories but it's a lot to do all at once but sometimes it's better just to get it all over with and then be able to now start kind of fresh and be on a new footing to move forward in the direction that you want to go so hopefully things have settled down since all the new informations

Meaghan Moylan  23:15  
they have we recently started using in Haven which we're excited about so that's our newest tech in the stack and so I'll be able to report back but we have absolutely loved working with the team so far and really just for purchasing i don't know i mean keep in mind we're in the mountains okay, we don't have a Walmart or anything so II and even purchasing from like standard textile for linens, things take a while to get here. If we want to go to Sam's Club, it's a two hour drive or Costco. I know it's like a big problem with me because I'm a big shopper. Big shopper big Sephora. Oh

gosh. So you have to take like a full weekend to go like do all your shopping and I would assume yeah Salt Lake

is like five hours away. So if you want like actual shopping you can drive down to Salt Lake but I use this is awful. I use conferences as a like to get my city fill.

I do the same thing. I didn't say yeah, I

mean, you're in a similar boat. Like when we go where where we left New Orleans in New Orleans. I'm like, What can I Okay, so there's a mall here I have this opening of my schedule I can go that I need. And that is how I live my life is like conference to conference being able to all Uber where it tracks conferences in Minneapolis every year. So at the Mall of America in September, I myself it was like this dinner with vendors or I could go to the Mall of America by myself and I went there

sorry buy a gun.

Yeah, it's very, it's that's the biggest challenge for me over here is the lack of shopping.

Alex Husner  24:50  
Yeah. Wow. Gosh, that's definitely a challenge for sure. We'll be back in just a minute after a word from our premier brand

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Alex Husner  26:49  
Now that things have kind of evened out, as far as pace is concerned, you know, I think we're all seeing that in every market. I've heard some cool things that you guys do as far as guest experience. And just curious being at how your focus evolved, I guess since you first got to the company to now in the different things that you do within the unit and how you're really creating that guest experience kind of more as a focus these days. Yeah,

Meaghan Moylan  27:12  
I think you know, when I first started, it was very much like how can we make sure that we are ahead of what's coming toward us, right? Like, our competition is going to continue to get on a better tech stack and our competition is going to continue to ensure that their pricing is maximized. They're going to be using every tool out there, right, like just imagining that anything that we're already thinking of our competition has already done, even if they haven't, and they haven't thought about it, I think allowed us to start like innovating or die, which I love that thing. And so we went through that like eight to 12 month period where it was so much change. And so the next year, we called it the sustainability year basically like all this change, our business has evolved significantly we had before I started outposts was doubling in size year over year, owner wise. So what started in 2014. And we have about 800 professionally managed homes in Jackson period, like such a small market and we manage about 260 of them. And that grew like pretty quickly starting in 2018, like pretty small company and then doubling in stock size starting in 2018. And so this kind of became like, Okay, we have a completely new tech stack, we have a lot more owners COVID has died down demand has died down like how can we remain a sustainable business for the long term? Like how can we continue to build our cash reserves and make sure that we're in a really, really healthy financial position. So that morphed into studying cashflow in a different way than we had before. Like, rather than a monthly basis, we're looking at it weekly. And we know exactly when we're gonna go in the negative and what that means for us and what we need to do payroll wise and when when we need to start spending money. And we took a really hard look at the budget. And rather than cutting expenses, we held on a lot of things. So we didn't make big linen purchasing decisions, right? Like we just kind of held tight for about a year just to see like how consistent audible can we make this business, let's refine all of our processes and make sure that we're doing things to the best of our ability. Let's really cater to the top 20% of our homeowners and make sure that retention is not even something that we have to think about because they love us so much. And then the same thing on the guest side. And our focus has really been our tagline is Welcome to our home. And so we've kind of we bring everything back to how can we make sure that every guest feels like they're checking into their own home. And it was a year of that. And I it was hard, right? Like our team had been so exhausted across all of the businesses that we have and not just outpost and our team was tired. They'd been through what felt like war and you know, we really just said like, Okay, this is going to be a year of no change. We had a lot of change and we We're very, very busy for a very long time, what seems like forever and now like, let's just hold tight and make sure that everything we have like we're really, really refining it and making sure it's perfect. And I almost think back to unreasonable hospitality because I feel like well, good. Dara talks about that, too. Like before moving to the next level, like, have you perfected everything that you have? Yeah. And now we're kind of getting out of that. And we're back into Okay, now we're innovating again. And what more can we change and the team got this like year to take a deep breath. And we're in a really great position, which is awesome to see.

So I'm going to ask you, you mentioned you've got a couple of different businesses kind of within the portfolio of outposts. Was it intentional to start these businesses? Or was it something that they were in the market and you acquired them? Like how did this all come to be?

It really wasn't intentional? Before I started, the owner of outpost Mechi had started OTU cleaning. And we have a cleaning company here, mainly due to like retention purposes of housekeepers, and just wanting to control that experience for guests and for homeowners. So otoo cleaning started and rather than contractors, all of the housekeepers are employed by otoo cleaning, which provides services to outpost and also other vacation rental companies. In Jackson and commercial businesses and residential, they clean my house they Oh, Julian's been great. And then revision started. So two chefs, one of them now being my fiancee, started a business stir Oh, yeah, meal delivery service. So they were executive chefs in town and got laid off during COVID When all the restaurants stopped, obviously working. And they started doing catered meal delivery, and it becomes getting this huge catering company now, when weddings came back, they're catering massive weddings in Jackson. And Mackay was like, I actually want to be a part of that, like, Would you guys be interested in partnering together, and that gave us this experience to have private Chefs for our homeowners and our guests, but we also they make donuts. And so we have a box of their doughnuts in every one of our homes for each arrival. And then came terrain, which is our landscaping and snow removal company. And we had someone approach us that owned a landscaping company that was exhausted ready to get out of the service industry. And we thought like this is another way that we could integrate this into our vertical our ORS need landscaping and snow removal. So we bought that business. And then we had the coffee company that we were utilizing to put coffee in all of our homes for our rivals, they reached out to us and said, Hey, we're exhausted and we're looking to sell and you're one of our largest customers because you put coffee and every single one of your homes before your guests arrivals would you be interested in buying us and we were like, we don't have enough businesses. Let's do it. So then we bought. And then we had a coffee shop on Town Square comm available a space and the owner reached out to us and said, Hey, I own this coffee shop. I don't want to do a brick and mortar space anymore. I just want to roast coffee and send it out to other businesses like do you want to rent this space? And we were like, yes. So we built out the space and opened a coffee shop two summers ago. And so yeah, we've got quite the book of business going and it all really like kind of came in waves which we're thankful for. But it was all really During the same year that we were switching the entire tech stack over and outpost so are opening coffee shop at the same time. Yeah, I felt like like the sustainable year was also a year of sleeping afterward.

Because you drank too much coffee. Yeah, right.

Alex Husner  33:29  
Oh my goodness. That's cool, though. Because when those are all very symbiotic businesses and they you know, feed your properties, but then also feed others in the market. And what about the probably creates good relationships with you and your competitors to a certain extent, what is the market like out there? I mean, do the companies kind of work together or they kind of stay in their own lane. So it's

Meaghan Moylan  33:48  
been really cool this summer that I moved to Jackson, which was about six months after I started worked remotely during that time period. So I came up here for the summer, three years ago almost to move into a coffee shop and we were building out the space and just kind of manage the project. And we also started Jackson Hole Lodging Association with a couple of other owners of vacation rental companies at that same time. And we were dealing with regulation for homes that are located within or outside of this like overlay that was created in the town of Jackson, where you are allowed to rent vacation homes, and we were fighting that regulation. It didn't impact outpost, but it was really just a way for us to come together for the vacation rental managers who were affected which obviously like we want to make sure that short term rentals are as friendly as possible in the space so even if it wasn't directly impacting us we wanted to be a part of the fight and so we develop this really like friendly competitive relationship with the main property management companies in the area Rachel all day being one of them who owns a boat in Park City but also abode in Jackson and Sun Valley and now she and I are like great friends and go out to dinner and are technically competitors but the creation of the Lodging Association It was one of the coolest things I've been able to be a part of since moving here.

Alex Husner  35:03  
That's really cool. That's great.

Meaghan Moylan  35:05  
I wanted to ask you a kind of you brought up, bring it as product regulations. And you guys sit in a really unique space where you've got all these national parks. And so there's a lot of protection that needs to happen and things that I think most people wouldn't be in agreement. You know, you want to be protecting of like our natural resources. And these beautiful parks and I had a neighbor years ago that they they still to this day, they go to Jackson Hole every year like that is their family vacation, they go to ski and they know it takes them forever to get there. It's like two days to fly, because I always get stuck somewhere. But they talk about just how incredibly beautiful it is. And it's just the you know, just seeing it grow is kind of it's great and wonderful because like, oh, we get these new businesses when we go there's new restaurants or there's new something, but it's encroaching on these larger areas of these national parks. And so I would imagine and I could be wrong, but that you guys have a different whole different regulatory conversation than just somebody like in Destin. I mean, Justin niche, you know, Destin Panama City, it's just like, Okay, we don't have enough roads. You can't park 27 cars at this one house because there's not enough space. Like there's things like that, because they built these giant houses, but we're not encroaching on again protected land. And so how do you navigate that

it's challenging in a lot of ways a lot. So the first is on the staffing side, you know, in a place like Destin, you can live in Freeport, or if Uniacke springs, or even further than that, and drive down, we don't really have that option here, because all of the land that surrounds us is National Forest and national park land. So we've got two towns that our employees can live in that are a little outside of Jackson, they're still incredibly expensive. And in the winter, the mountain, one of them's over a mountain pass, so it could close and does close really frequently in the winter during snowstorms. And then we also have a town that you have to drive through a canyon, which also closes because it's very dangerous in the winter. So that's an issue. And then we also have this responsibility to ensure that our guests are treating the community appropriately. And, you know, we all know this, right? Like, the second the guests are acting a fool. It's immediately on the property management companies and not the I'm sorry. And so we're fighting this uphill battle all the time, that mainly is really around like education, okay, you're gonna come in contact with a moose most likely do not feed the moose. And things that, you know, seem obvious, but a lot of it is education around the area, like this area is very protected, and very sacred to so many people who have been ranchers for hundreds of years, and who have had this land in their family. So if you're on a walk, don't throw your coffee cup in someone's yard, if don't throw it behind the fence that you shouldn't be walking on, you could actually get shot like it is the Wild West. A lot of ways. So we focus a lot on education, we keep FAQs on our website for our guests like this is how far we should stay from animals. This is how you should treat people when you're in town. And it has helped. And then, you know, when guests are in town, we continue to kind of reiterate that education. And on just like the community side, we work really hard to ensure that we have really good relationships with businesses and the community, a lot of it like we employ over 200 people in Jackson, which the population has 10,000. So it's there aren't a lot of people that live here in general, but we donate 1% of our revenues to the Community Housing Trust, which helps provide housing to families. And Jackson housing is a major issue here as it is in most school markets and markets in general already. So 1% of our revenues for a coffee shop goes there. And that allows us to kind of build these relationships, and we encourage our guests to do as much locally as they can which I think we only have with McDonald's and Wendy's and a Dairy Queen. And that's it. So like pretty much anyway, yeah. And I think that that has really helped with just the view on vacation rentals, like just making sure working hard. And then of course, the Jacksonville Lodging Association, just having a seat at the table to have those conversations when we are caught in any type of crossfire between like the guests and the town, making sure that we have a seat at the table to be a part of those decisions and speak on behalf of all the positive things that we do provide to the community. Right?

Alex Husner  39:14  
Yeah, you guys are doing it right. I mean, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu. And by having that seat and relationships you you can eliminate and get ahead of problems so much better than if you have to find out about problems and the things that are being done to address them. And then now you don't have any ability to affect any change. So that's really exciting to hear. I did want to switch gears just a little bit and we want to talk about your podcast. Yeah. You just recently launched this year and it has been awesome to listen to you and I've already learned a lot from it. espressos and workflows and you're on will slickers network. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how did it come about? Like what tell us as fellow podcasters we love Right? Talk Yeah. What made you think of the idea? Or

Meaghan Moylan  40:03  
a tough act to follow? Let me just say that I was very like just the podcast, which everyone obviously like, you're so incredible and everyone is so friendly in the podcasting space in the industry anyway, so will approach me we become friends like back in the fall and he texted me like a couple days before Christmas with a graphic of the podcast like he had taken my headshot and put it into like workflows and espressos with a photo of it and said, Hey, this is like totally random. But

Alex Husner  40:29  
would you ever host a podcast? I

Meaghan Moylan  40:31  
had this idea. And I was like, I've literally never thought about it. But okay, I said this to someone recently, but I did this like year of Yes, last year, where every

Alex Husner  40:43  
I heard you talking about?

Meaghan Moylan  40:47  
I essentially tried to say yes to every single opportunity, like every speaking engagement, every podcast every like, anytime anyone asked me the lodging, association, whatever to be a part of, I said, Yes. Which was exhausting. But also, I met more people last year than I have probably in the last 10 years of my life. And it's been so cool. And now have this like, really amazing network where, you know, if I want to go on vacation, and Myrtle Beach, then I can call you up. So I said, Yes, obviously, of course. And he provided the content for season one, or like an outline, and basically said, like, look, we'll edit the show for you. And we'll produce it. And here's some ideas of what I would love for you to talk about season one, and we'll just do seven episodes and see how it does. So we did and it was really cool. And like got people actually listen to it that weren't my mom, which I remember telling him like, I feel like it's gonna get like five listens.

Alex Husner  41:36  
I remember those days.

Meaghan Moylan  41:39  
He was like, I mean, it will for like a little bit like, it's gonna be a while before it really starts to pick up. And after seven episodes, he called me and said, Hey, we actually got like a good amount of listens. And there seems to be people know about the podcast. So would you be interested in doing more? And so I said, Yes. So now every Tuesday, a new episode comes out, which Oh, my gosh, is a lot of pressure. I don't know if you guys feel this way. But like the pressure to create content on a weekly basis, like and do your job and make sure that you're making time to record and make sure that like you're catering to what people are talking about in the industry. And what people want to hear about has been challenging in a totally different way, which I very much appreciated. I feel like it's catering to this, like creative side that I didn't know that I had, and just like being able to connect with people that I had never spoken to before. Even like, I'm sure this happens to y'all all the time. But like someone that comes up to you and says, Hey, I listen to your podcast, and I learned this like, that's really all it takes for you to want to keep doing it. Oh, absolutely.

Alex Husner  42:34  
Yeah,

Meaghan Moylan  42:35  
there was a couple of times where Alex and I were at conferences, and we'd be in like different spaces, and somebody would come up and they're talking to me and like, they're like, they know me, and I'm thinking like, oh my god, I'm really getting old. Like, I really don't know who this person is. And I finally would just be so embarrassed. And I'm just like, I'm so sorry, where did I meet you? And they're like, oh, no, I've never met you. We listen to your podcast. Or like somebody that would know Alex, and they assume they knew me or vice versa, or Yeah, who are you? Alex? Are you Annie? I'm like, What do you mean, you don't know who we are. And then it was like, people that aren't watching like the YouTube stuff. But to your point of like, the very beginning, it was like the first people that reviewed were our dads like they were our fans, and they were sticking with you the long I don't think my dad has let's do an episode and probably six months Benjen he'd been now I think he's his health struggles have kept him from doing but there's just so funny like how it just it changes your whole dynamic about like your relationship with people and that feeling like you don't know anybody. You really know everybody, on some level in the industry at this point in it's so much easier. Like, I remember when Alex and I first started, it was like, we would reach out to people. And there are people that I had been reaching out to in various situations through my career wouldn't take my phone call if I paid for them. The second podcast all of a sudden, they're like, how quickly can I talk to you, you know, and we just I just opened up the world of people, but so great, and so gracious. And people have been so supportive. And whenever there's been struggles for either one of us, I mean, we've had more friends than we could imagine just to be there to just be a sounding board or help you kind of your creative flow or just give you advice. I mean, it's it's such a great, great industry overall. And that's what we found, like vacation rentals is to your point in the very beginning, like, this is the place that we belong. And we're just confirmed like the podcast helped confirm that without a doubt.

Yeah, yeah. It's been really I just feel like, I don't know, like nothing else exists like this, even if I don't know. Yeah. And I don't know, every day and every month that passes, I feel like more and more connected to this network that exists within our industry. And yeah, like you said, I just feel in any way. Like if I came across a decision, and I didn't know what to do, or we had an issue and any of our businesses really, or a potluck, whatever it is, I feel like I could call five people and every single person would be like, do you need me to come up there and help like, there is this or like, I've been through this already? Here's what I did to handle it. And I don't know that doesn't I just feel like it doesn't come around very often. And so whenever I think like, oh my god, I'm exhausted. And this has been 10 years of my career, and would I ever want to do anything different? I just think through like, no, this doesn't exist.

Alex Husner  45:15  
Really, I mean, it's hard when you have such a network of people and relationships that you've built over the years. And I get that question, often. Now, now that I'm in my own lane as a marketing consultant that people have asked, Would you do marketing for other industries? And I wouldn't rule it out completely. But am I looking for work outside of this? No. I mean, I've got enough addressable of an audience, that a lot of people that I'd love to work with that are, you know, I know them. I know, their businesses. I know their families in some cases. And I remember in 2021, when we went to San Antonio, we made a LinkedIn announcement at that conference that we were going to be starting a podcast. And I felt like at that conference, like we knew a lot of people but then every conference thereafter, it's like, it is just compounded so much of people that we've we've met through the show, and it's a rewarding thing. And in between going to these events, it makes you feel like you're so really connected with our friends and you know, new people that we meet every week. And I'm like your show, though yours is more educational, where you're teaching things each week are like Tips and Tricks that's never been our style, so we don't have to prepare as much.

Meaghan Moylan  46:23  
I always think like I said this a couple of times, like to all those teachers that ever told me that I talked too much. It was like in your face. This is exactly what I was preparing for. To just talk too much. You know, I'm

taking money off my voice now. Right?

We're certainly giving it a try. That's for sure. Yeah, that's so So Megan, big things coming down the pike for you getting married later this year. So you've got a big wedding coming up. We're super excited for that to add to your daily grind. What else do you have going on,

I have been trying to figure out what my travel is going to look like this year, a lot of talk about conferences and go which conference I want to go to. I've also joined, I keep a sticky note on my desk, but like four or five committees or advisory boards, which seems like amazing at the time. And now I'm like, what I think I did a lot as Annie, you know, because we're on one together. So yes, with the commitments and then I'm also planning my wedding with a turnaround time of eight months. Now we're at six months. So I've got my dress, I've got my venue, we've got most of our vendors booked. But my fiance and I are getting married in Puerto Rico

destination wedding. Oh my goodness, that's

Alex Husner  47:38  
a great idea. By the way, if I go back and do it again, definitely would have done a destination. Very

Meaghan Moylan  47:44  
excited. We had a hurricane the year we got married. So we didn't get to do any of that stuff. We got him to get married and have a reception at the church. So just enjoy all of it. Ya

know, I'm like, praying for good weather, receptions indoors, but the ceremonies outdoors. And we have an amazing planner, luckily, but I just paid for the invitations yesterday. And there'll be it's a two monthly time. So hopefully they'll make it here in two months. We'll see. But yeah, so lots of wedding planning. I don't know, I feel like I my obligation since my year of Yes, have really tripled by 10, which has been really fun in a lot of ways. But there's definitely like never a lot of free time these days.

Alex Husner  48:24  
I still relate to that. I think my year of yes was 2021 Going into 2022 that I said that I said yes to everything too. And exactly the same experience you had that it opened up a lot of doors, but then it got to a point where I'm like, I am definitely being stretched too thin. And I think this is my year of instead of always saying yes. And not saying no, it's not right now. Maybe another time? Because it really it gets it gets really tough. But you are a little bit younger than me. And so I would say keep saying yes. It is worth it. And you even said yesterday husband so I'm sure he was happy.

Meaghan Moylan  49:02  
Yes, all over the place these days. It's gonna be like a maybe here soon, probably. We want to start a family. And we'll see. I don't know, my clock is already ticking though. Like I'm like, Okay, if I am going to be 31 When we get married, which means that if we wait here that will be 32. And so you know, you start like backing your time out like okay, yeah, listen, I'm 33 Then what does this mean for it? So that's kind of also like that I'm in but I was talking to my future mother in law this morning on the phone, and she listens to every episode of my podcast. And after my podcast, she listens to it. She sends me a text and she's like, I just love when you talk about this. She's like the best person in the whole world. Anyway, she always gives this advice like, hey, why don't you just sit down and think about it and like rest for a little bit and then you'll know you'll know what to do next and give yourself

Alex Husner  49:51  
that space.

Meaghan Moylan  49:52  
It's gonna sound advice. That's very sound advice.

Alex Husner  49:56  
Well, I think I'm gonna see you at the executive Summit, which Yeah, I'll see you in just super. That's yeah, definitely looking forward to that. But if any of our listeners want to get in touch with you, Megan, what's the best way to find you? And also to find your podcasts? LinkedIn

Meaghan Moylan  50:09  
is the definitely the best way. I've been trying to be better about posting, does

Alex Husner  50:13  
your podcast have a LinkedIn page too? Or I need to do that.

Meaghan Moylan  50:17  
If you could go to work clothes and espressos.com and that is the best way to find or podcast app on Apple or Spotify. Awesome.

Alex Husner  50:25  
Okay. Yeah. Great. Well, we will include that in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining us today for everybody listening. We appreciate you and we will see you next time.