Having a Work-Life Balance with John An

From the Podcast: John is a short-term rental industry expert, with particular expertise in optimizing and customizing the technology stack, driving up revenue, and continually streamlining operations. Leveraging his experience in building, growing, and operating a successful short-term rental brand from the ground up, John constantly utilizes his own short-term rental business as a fertile testing ground to roll up his sleeves and dig in to experiment with new systems, technologies, and approaches.

John is an architect by training. With a Doctorate in Building Physics from Harvard University, John was previously was an expert consultant in the environmental sustainability industry. The short-term rental industry is John’s second career and he is passionate about and is dedicated to helping professionalize the industry.

In this episode of Slick Talk, we dive into his personal story of becoming an entrepreneur, his “why” behind it all, the challenges on regulations in Hawaii, and his new venture with AJL.

Original source: watch on YouTube

Transcript

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[Applause] you’re listening to slick talk the hospitality podcast a podcast for those
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who are in and around the hospitality industry who love live and breathe what they do you can join us for candid and
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unscripted conversations with hospitality experts and founders as we go deeper into their personal stories
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while they’re sharing their triumphs and trials that got them to where they are today i’m your host will slickers and you’re
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listening to an episode of slick talk the hospitality podcast now let’s begin
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[Music]
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all right everybody welcome back to another episode of slick talk the hospitality podcast and man i’m loving
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the new intro john i’m so excited you get to be the first guest to experience the new slick talk uh intro and outro to
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the show but my man this episode has been a long time in the making and after getting to meet you at vrma in person
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live it was so great to see you i i’m just so pumped to have you on the podcast so thank you so much for joining me today
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well i’m really excited to be on the podcast and um you know like i said
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you know being on this podcast is a huge milestone so i’m really excited to uh
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to be on this podcast and you know kind of have this conversation with you for sure well this is a this is a time to
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get into it because um man your story is in it is incredible uh just listening from your start to
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where you are today you’ve had a lot of accomplishments and i i just love seeing
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it shape in action right so let’s just start in the beginning how did you start getting into hospitality
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short-term rentals what was that you know founders or beginners aha moment we were like all right this this
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is it um i think it’s kind of like a frog being
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in a pot of water that’s slowly boiling right so there was no real this is it but
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basically i’m an architect by training and um in 2013
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i actually decided to stop my nine to five uh and start a development company
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because i’d worked with some amazing developers who not only made money with uh development projects
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but also i saw that they were creating proper projects that gave back to the community
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and so that’s what i wanted to be when i grew up a developer right and so
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i started a company that did ground up new construction development single family homes
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and when you’re developing what happens is cash is always flowing out out
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out until you go and sell yeah so during one of my projects i was
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vacationing in hawaii and i heard that the short-term rental thing you know creates some positive
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cash flow so i just started dabbling with it you know i got one property got a manager
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and it cash flowed you know more than we had anticipated so it was great
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but the management was terrible and so little by little i started taking over
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pieces of the management and the other thing is i was living 5 000 miles away
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and so from day one i had to focus on systems because i couldn’t just roll out of bed and go and take care of a little
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issue here there anywhere so it wasn’t the person i just had to have the systems there
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so with all that um i saw that short-term rental you know
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there’s a lot of moving parts so when you have one or two properties it seems really easy and it’s like oh i’m just
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gonna scale i’m gonna get a lot of properties but with one or two properties i just saw like the messages were gonna take
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over my life and the scheduling was going to take over my life and i didn’t want to get to a point where
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there might be a great investment opportunity but i was just stretched too thin so that i couldn’t take it on
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and so that’s kind of how i got into this industry um you know doing it and my goal was to be
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able to get one property every year into my portfolio um
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and i was kind of on that track um and then covered it
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so that kind of you know shifted things but right before
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kovit i guess that’s i guess 2019 was kind of the aha moment um early 2019
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was when i realized that i actually had a really solid um system and company
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and other people actually started asking me to manage their companies because i was bringing so much higher revenue than
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you know everyone else yeah and when i was doing a real professional job and so it was growing and then i was all right
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you know if i go with this i could probably make uh something you know big out of it
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and so 2019 was when i was planning on really really expanding
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and growing uh my hospitality company ohana stay i even went to legends and cartagena
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and that’s where i met a lot of folks including simon layman um and we could talk about that later
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um and then obviously coveted so that’s kind of how i got into this industry in
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a nutshell you know i love it and i’m curious to know with the cash flow
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you know because i want to i want to see what was the were you a owner were you a manager what
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was the beginning steps uh did you with that one property per year that you’re trying to get was that and owning one
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property per year so buying another property every year or was it managing right so it was owning right so it was
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all for you know essentially slowly growing a small portfolio of real estate right
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and i think that’s also one of the things that i wouldn’t say it’s unique but i think
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like an owner whether i’m managing for someone else or my own property and there is a different mindset when you
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think of it as an owner than as a renter or as a you know just
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you just take care of properties very differently and so yeah it was planned i was planning on owning each property one a
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year okay that’s good good to know so now my second question goes into your systems
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also leading into more regulation stuff because i know hawaii itself is a little bit more strict when it
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comes to regulation um inside of not only short-term rentals but with travel especially during covid
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um but let’s talk about your systems and play that you had um that you’re realizing okay like this is a this is a
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scalable system that i have pre-covered and then going into covet how did those systems
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change or did they stay the same i’m kind of curious to hear your before and after all right
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so before covid um i think a lot of people have heard me
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say i’ve onboarded and off boarded over 15 different pmss uh in my career one
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five right yeah and that was with the goal of finding that
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perfect unicorn pms that does everything the way i want it all the time right
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and so you know i get onto one you know certain features wouldn’t work
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and then i get kind of i get like the shiny object syndrome and you know see the marketing of another one yeah well
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that and then that you know the next one would address some issues but then be terrible at things that you know that
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were working previously right yeah so
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obviously i haven’t tried every pms out there because there are you know too many yeah but i actually have a really
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good perspective on like determining what’s marketing speak and what’s actual real feature and kind of
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asking the right questions to figure things out that way so basically pre-covet i i had a pretty
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solid tech stack but what i’ll say and it worked really well for what i needed but what i’ll say
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is um i had a lot of redundancies or overlaps and it was kind of wasteful right and
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wanted enough revenue and everything that it was a small fraction of my expenses and
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you know i was i guess a little bit wasteful um during covid
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and obviously i had to kind of slash a lot of my expenses yeah um the whole idea was if if you survive you thrive
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right and that that was all i had in my mind just survive figure out some way to get some revenue in to offset you know
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offset all the costs yeah and so as part of that i actually both uh manpower as
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well as software i actually started taking a really hard look at what are the key components that
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i need in my in my business and really streamline my tech stack i
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mean i still have like 35 or 40 different you know software or technologies that i use yeah but that’s the streamlined
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version right but yeah it really forced me to think about do i really need the service um
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what’s the value it’s creating for me um and so it really got streamlined down
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to the essentials yeah and i have to say right now i operate my expenses
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i probably cut my overall operating expenses by 25 to 30 percent between
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manpower and software uh between pre-covert and postcovid
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can you explain to us um what the essentials were when it comes to your tech stack like what were the
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key players that were like this is a this is a no-cut no-brainer
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okay so obviously that you know you have to have a pms of some sort that the calendar and you know does
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communications so for me um
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the way i’ve rearranged my tech stack i kind of need to explain how i do it so that it makes sense sure it was
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again based on my experience of onboarding and off-boarding 15 different pmss i don’t
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believe that there can ever be an all-in-one that works for me and my business
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um just just assumptions that you know the companies make yeah uh won’t work
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the way i them to work so i take a lot of different tech stack and then i create my own dashboard that
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brings the different pieces in and i get the information that i need right and that’s
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we’ll talk about that a little bit later so for me the central central uh component of my
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tech stack is what used to be hospitable um smartbnb smartbnb what used to be hospital yeah
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the other way around yeah and the reason is they do messaging really well
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they take care of the calendar and channel distribution to the you know three main uh channels
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um and that’s really what i want from kind of the central system and then i can add all the other things
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around it right so um and then i use obviously pricing uh
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software i jump back and forth between mostly wheel house and price labs
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sometimes beyond pricing yeah um and uh you know is there is there a reason why
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you do multiple different uh pricing i’m just kind of curious because we we try to stick with one we have dabbled with
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others but just more on the sense of hey you know doing what we do in the media space is kind of dumb not to try out
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just on just uh you and i were talking about beta tests you know see what what’s different what do we like what do we not like um you know that type of
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stuff that way we can give an actual opinion i’m just gonna curious on for you on why you do uh three
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there are different reasons sometimes um depending on the way an uh owner that
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i’m doing revenue management for depending on like how they operate it might be more cost efficient for me to
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use one one tool versus another um some tools have better informational
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dashboard some tools have way more levers to kind of fine-tune what you want to do
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and so you know i routinely kind of rotate around it based on
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what i’m seeing in the market what the client needs what i want to do and then also if i want to be a beta test the new
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tools gotcha uh and so that’s kind of uh how i do it but revenue management is
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something that i’ve always that’s the one piece that i’ve never outsourced i’ve done that from day one
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and that’s what your name has been like known for i’ve always known john and the revenue manager like you were just
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always really good at making people more money that’s all i’ve heard especially like in the facebook groups and through
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the legends x guys or you know jasper and eric um so that’s what i’ve always known you for before meeting you and
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then getting to know you i was like oh damn like this guy’s really smart outside of just revenue management so it’s pretty cool
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the one way i’ll explain my revenue management is i don’t really play golf but um
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a guy who has like the ugliest swing but somehow managed to you know hit it
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far and long right like i’m not classically trained but i’ve done a lot of trial and errors on my own property
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right that’s the benefit of starting with your own properties because then you can play around and experiment
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and so my processes you know by any traditional revenue manager standard it looks messy
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but one way or another it works consistently across multiple markets right so
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um yeah that’s kind of where my revenue management is but what’s up what was the main question i lost track um you’re
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you’re three uh non-negotiables when it came to tech stack so you’re talking about going between beyond price labs and wheel
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house um you talked about uh hospitable and then is there another uh piece of
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tech that you just find really crucial and then the third piece is not something that most people in this
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industry and they’re just using it’s not just one it’s it’s things like zapier and you
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know those other things that help connect uh one tool to another sure and that’s
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really what i use to then bring in any other piece of tech that comes in
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uh so um yeah i mean there are lots others that i’d love to like bring up but
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if i had to just strip it down and just have you know year four that’s kind of where where it would be
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for me i’ve heard a lot of people talk about zapier uh recently especially as it’s becoming i think it’s not very
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popular in the industry kind of like you said but it’s getting to the point where people start mentioning enough that others are like oh shoot like i just
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wrote down zapier again because we were looking at it and we never fully like actually brought it in so it’s like oh
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great another reminder to to check out zapier because i think you’re you mentioned earlier in the episode
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that you know the messaging and uh the pricing and all this other stuff of of the management side is just going
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to take too much if you have to wake up every or roll out of bed every five minutes just to go do something uh regarding your properties um if you
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don’t mind me asking what markets are you in outside of ohana right so um obviously you know my main
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primary market is hawaii uh on uh in honolulu yeah that’s all right that’s what i mean
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is my company name ohana means family and um but
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i provide revenue management services or um kind of the tech tape services are
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kind of the pulling together the different tech yeah i provide that in florida and wisconsin
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and colorado and arizona and
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yeah it’s it’s an approach that i take to revenue management so it’s not like just knowing the market in fact i
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rely on my clients to help me understand what the market is
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but then i apply my systems and my processes to it and you know kind of can over about a month
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to two months can ramp up and start bringing in the higher
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revenue uh amounts than than they traditionally have been
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but yeah those are the markets that i’m currently in um
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and i’m in discussion with some people in texas and you know kind of where wherever people
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basically want to make money right [Laughter] that’s what i call revenue management i call it cash
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hey i like that it’s like that’s the best version of it because it’s it’s crazy like i i came from the
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hotel revenue management side uh versus the short-term rental and it’s very different but very similar but i find
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the short-term rental revenue management processes and tools to be
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so much more further advanced like i went to cornell’s revenue management school and i did you know got my certification through there
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but i’m learning way more by applying certain like tools and just overall tactics to a short-term rental property
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um in a competitive market rather than i’d ever learned in the corner my one controversial thought on revenue
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management between hotel approach and short-term mental approach yeah of course i’m all layers so in the hotel
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industry um you know revenue management the fundamental basis i it seems is the comp
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set right and a huge comp set and it makes sense because all the
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players in the field play by basically a set of rules that you all agree on right
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and so the data is it’s a validated data set because
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everyone’s playing by the same rules yeah and the short-term rental industry you talk to 50 different operators in
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the same market and everyone has a different set of max min how they operate right yeah so
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data is not it’s not a valid data set for sure and yet all the big you know whether it’s
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price labs or wheelhouse they’re basically just aggregating the invalid data and finding some average right
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and so the comp set to me helps you see
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what the market is doing but it’s not i don’t look at the numbers for the
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pricing because it it’s it’s an invalid you know data set yeah well that’s
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something that i know a lot of hotel folks kind of cringe when i say you know i don’t think
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you know comp sets should be kind of this like holy grail yeah but um that’s kind of my attitude towards it so
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it’s very true though that if you look at a short-term rental or vacation rental they’re very different very unique and they operate differently
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because of the type of owner you have one owner per property versus one owner for 50 rooms right so
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it’s so much different when you take the number of inventory to the comparison of the inventory what the
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uniqueness behind it the amenities the location the everything the way they operate you know
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the a lot of people like when i was out in the cannon beach seaside area
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hotels they don’t give it like they didn’t care they were just like yeah sixty dollars a night let’s do it we’re
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gonna sell out and then the short term rentals uh the homes the airbnbs quote unquote um you
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know we’re we’re going you know nothing worth nothing nothing less than a five night minimum i don’t care if i’m
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leaving money on the table i don’t want that type of guest that pays 60 a night for a hotel room and thinks they can
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just trash it or do whatever i want the families are going to be here for a week they’re going to treat my my place like
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home and if i don’t get booked during a certain week or a weekend then that’s fine i don’t want it so it’s very very
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much different and unique in that way yeah so you know i i hear some people who think
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they found the secret to pricing is like i look at my competitors and i price five percent below right
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it’s like that’s a race to the bottom like that that’s the race at the bottom so exactly that’s the data set that a lot
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of these aggregators are are using to say hey this is the average price so anyway i’ll get off of this my my
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soapbox here it’s okay that’s what we’re here for we’d like to chop it up a little bit on the podcast but um okay so
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let’s dive into you said something that i really really am curious about and i’ve been as we were messaging on
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facebook i even messaged you a couple times like i’m intrigued tell me more please tell me more and uh you talk
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about these pieces of tech right that you pull together the one unified dashboard that only gives you the information that you need
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and want for your business now i want to know one how did you even think of this idea
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like i know we’ve always talked on the podcast um i’ve talked to a lot of other operators that it would just be so great
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if we had a unified dashboard if all these pieces were in one sp you know one place so that we’d have to log in into
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20 different accounts but there’s never been a real product there’s companies are coming up with
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their own products that have all these tools that they’ve created or they’ve pieced together kind of in a similar way
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i’m assuming but you jumped in and were just like you know what i’m going to create my own how did you even start and like figure this
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out this is where i want to know on the geeky side of things like what is tech
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tape basically give me give me the details right so tech tape is
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essentially you know the you know the the fun way to describe it is duct tape for the
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short-term rental technology space right so again i’m taking
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what’s best in class for my my business or my clients business and figuring out
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what are the pain points and then seeing okay how can i take off the shelf existing products and make it
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work for your workflow right because we have so much innovation in this space but also so much fragmentation
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so how did i start it it it really actually started because of
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trying to make the workflow for my va’s smoother easier because they were the ones that were jumping in and hopping
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out and logging in and locking out and the big frustration for me was
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they would make mistakes and they’re only human they’re going to make mistakes right so the process is flawed because it’s so
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fragmented so as i noticed you know the same mistakes being made over and over again
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you know i kind of thought like all right like what what is the critical piece of information that that
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piece of software is is creating what is it that my you know staff need
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to know so that they can quickly make some decisions and then if they have to dig in yes then they have to log into that
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tool and everything to all the details but you know what’s that like level of information that they can have so that
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i get frustrated when people make more than the same mistake more than two or three times right when when i make the
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same mistake two or three times and i kept on running into that with you know all the different tech you know
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stack that i used so it kind of derived from my own work process of saying hey
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you know this tool um even some of the hardware tools like um
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like the locks right yeah like i can get visibility into the battery levels of the lock
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but i have to log in to do that right yep right so if my vas
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can see kind of the overall level and then track it after every in every guest
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then we’re able to plan for batteries running out 100 uh smoke detectors or
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carbon monoxide detectors i don’t know most people are probably in violation of
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their insurance requirements but you need to be checking that after every guest right yeah and i can’t rely on my
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cleaners to do that so i have it so that we can remotely monitor it
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track it so that if there’s ever an insurance claim i have a long history of
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you know it was faulty this time we replaced it and so it’ll work with my insurance right so it’s all these things
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that like you know that you need to do but i don’t think there’s a single pms out there that will allow you to track uh
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smoke detectors and seo right yeah yeah well that’s that that’s the owner mindset right there that you’re just talking about that’s not an operator
24:43
uh or um guest definitely the owner mindset exactly if there’s a huge insurance claim they’re
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going to say you know there’s a fire show us that you’ve been monitoring your smoke detector 100 percent of it then
24:56
it’s not i’m sorry you didn’t you know clearly says this is a requirement right so it brings up a conversation i had
25:02
with justin ford from breezeway because we were talking about the safety certification and all the stuff and i went through the course with him and
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all these other things and he said you know that a lot of property managers are thinking like oh if anything does happen
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a fire or whatever it’s not my fault it’s not my property i don’t own it my name’s on the on the deed uh or or on
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the loan from the bank whatever but that’s actually very false like if you are the property manager and you take
25:26
responsibility as an operator in that way with the contract signed you are responsible that is part of your job as
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a as an operator um so i think a lot of operators need to start bringing in that mindset of ownership um like you i think
25:41
that’s a perfect example yeah i mean i i get there are lots of opportunities
25:46
right now with the arbitrage model and you know people trying to get in you know with very little investment yeah
25:53
but you know again the bad side to that is a lot of these folks also not only don’t understand
25:59
short-term rental but also don’t understand ownership right and reality right it’s just kind of like
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how do i make money as opposed to how do i preserve this asset how do i make sure
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it continues to you know how do i make a system a sustainable business that is here to
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cert you know surpass coven 19 and all these other things are going to happen in the world right and i’m not saying everyone who does arbitrage does that
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but i’m just saying yeah the barrier to entry becomes lower and lower and lower that you do
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get some people who enter into this market kind of without the right mindset i
26:35
guess you know yeah yeah i’ll back you up on that one so so back to tech tape so now you have
26:43
all these pieces in one dashboard how did you how did you create it did you bring out a developer are you gifted in
26:48
this area that we didn’t know um i’m kind of curious to to see how you brought the pieces together i’m assuming
26:54
zapier is probably a part of it too just because of their their automation and their their zap
26:59
ability yeah so it’s multiple pieces right but the key thing so no i’m
27:06
not a developer right i’m i’m savvy enough to kind of i could take
27:11
a piece piece of script or code that’s already written and then i can kind of
27:18
kind of see how this is the variable this is what it’s trying to tell it to do but i’m not a i can’t write code
27:23
right okay so everything that i do is off the shelf i use off-the-shelf products whether on the short-term
27:31
rental technology side or uh integrating things right so that’s why i mentioned zapier
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um i also use a platform called air table again off the shelf right it’s a it’s
27:43
essentially spreadsheet on steroids right like it’s
27:48
crazy what it can do and so by doing that
27:54
one you know a normal regular human being that doesn’t know how to program
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if you’re you know if you’re dedicated and if you want to find out and if you want to make things work you can make
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things work right without programming but the real benefit to my approach which i think is
28:13
very different from a lot of other folks is i could turn features around in a day or
28:20
two that works for me right it’s not this long technology roadmap
28:26
that takes three months to first put it onto the roadmap and then six months to start getting the beta right so
28:32
i think there’s a book called uh the lean startup right and it talks about like
28:39
quickly get to your mvp test it out see how it works get feedback revise it and you know continue
28:46
on right and so literally like my vas will alert me of a breakdown in the process
28:54
typically within a day or two they actually have a solution it’s not the most you know
29:00
it doesn’t have the shiny buttons it doesn’t have you know all that stuff but it works right
29:06
and not only for myself but for the clients that i provide the service for
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it’s a quick turnaround time it’s not a you know six nine month one year development roadmap to get it in
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yeah if i can figure out okay these pieces can be again duct taped together yeah then it’s
29:25
usually a day or two process to get it working and operational within your business
29:31
right so it’s more it’s a service it’s not a product most people think of all the software to be a product so that
29:38
you have to develop this one software that works for everyone the way i approach it is it’s a
29:43
semi-customized service where we identify what are the two or three
29:50
specific pain points yeah let’s figure it out and then let’s get a solution that works for you within
29:56
you know the next three to five days right so that’s it’s a very different
30:01
mentality if i was writing code it will take me you know three months
30:06
six years nine months to develop any new feature no that’s very true and a lot of people
30:12
i get this comment pretty often um a lot of people entrepreneurs people in the space
30:19
people outside the space people networks whatever um they always say like man you execute so fast it’s like how do you do
30:26
that it’s like because you have to create systems that are easily changeable and easy to just pull the
30:31
trigger on it’s just like what you’re talking about if you have to take six months with a
30:36
client to fix one little thing um you know that that just becomes frustrating and by the time you solve it which
30:42
a great example is is disney their their software in order to make a change into their overall software that they use to
30:49
run all their hotels and and all their resorts and everything inside disney world it takes two years to develop that
30:56
and change make one simple change whether it’s moving the logo from the left-hand side to the right-hand side whatever like it takes two years to make
31:02
a change so by the time it’s done they don’t need it they’ve already mastered their own way to solve that
31:08
that issue whether it’s you know just doing a couple extra steps or changing a step here on how they operate things um
31:15
and that just benefits nobody nobody so i like that approach that you’re taking with
31:20
you know being able to say you know we have we have one to two days three days whatever
31:26
a day time not a not a two year time right so i think that’s way more important especially because we all know
31:31
that with short-term rentals hospitality in general bookings are coming in cancellations
31:37
happen uh changes happen all the stuff like things are happening in the business especially as you’re onboarding
31:42
new properties uh maybe off-boarding a couple properties whatever it may be there’s a lot that goes in to the
31:49
day-to-day operations so to be able to execute faster with proper tools like something like
31:56
this i think is really important so tech tape is not a just it’s not just a product it’s kind of a product but it’s
32:02
more of a service behind the product that you know that you guys again that’s why i call it
32:08
semi-customized part of it is i guess the consulting part of really identifying what are your
32:13
specific pain points not this laundry list of all features that you you’ve ever wanted for sure and
32:19
then once you have those once we decide okay these are the specific ones then
32:25
90 of the time we could probably find a solution so yeah i love that well you mentioned
32:31
consulting so um i wanna you know pull out the uh the elephant in the room
32:40
just a small elephant very small elephant because it’s in a small room uh but
32:46
uh recently i would say like what a week or two a couple weeks ago we saw you
32:51
announced that you’re part of now ajl um which you’re the the head of the u.s
32:56
um so let’s talk about this like what what tell us more pretty much is what i’m
33:01
asking all right so let’s start with kind of how like how it
33:08
developed and then you know obviously i’d love to talk about ajl yeah um
33:13
so tech tape i actually um it’s something that i’ve been doing but i actually like made it a a thing a pro
33:21
a separate product from my property management business yeah all that um because right now in
33:27
honolulu there’s a crazy crazy legislation that’s aimed at shutting down pretty much all
33:34
short-term rentals other than hotels right and my business is like centrally
33:39
located in honolulu and so if that gets shut down you know my business overnight is gone
33:45
right and so i finally it forced me to take that step
33:50
of thinking branding creating uh you know the service this product
33:56
right yeah and so that so the legislation kind of drove me to
34:02
kind of think of a plan b that you know allows me to continue to stay
34:08
in the industry that i love and to share some services and knowledge and expertise
34:14
that i’ve developed over the years i had mentioned before that i had met simon at in cartagena uh
34:21
i guess i was the beginning of 2020 right before covet right and um
34:27
you know obviously we had spent a few days there with lots of other you know high level operators
34:32
but i remember the one moment i was you know we were taking a day off and we were all on a boat ride
34:39
and i remember distinctly thinking i was having a beer with simon and that was the time i was like you
34:44
know what i can you know i can approach simon like you know he’s a regular dude that i can
34:51
say hello to right and was like oh my god this is simon layman right yeah um so
34:58
i was going to vrma uh in san antonio and i knew simon was going to be there so
35:04
i really wanted to kind of get kind of market validation and get some feedback from simon on tech tape
35:10
and what i saw as problems in the industry and you know how tech tape would solve it
35:16
um and our conversation as we were talking about ajl’s
35:23
needs and tech tapes needs um there was not just technically but there
35:28
was just a lot of overlap in terms of you know what i could provide and what you know what i do and how i do things
35:36
and then obviously you know what ajl does and some areas where i could potentially
35:42
assist and so that’s kind of how this whole ajl uh
35:47
you know thing develops right yeah uh and so
35:52
yes so my role in the us for ajl so ajl you know is the go-to partner in the
35:58
short-term rental industry i mean i don’t think you know i i really need to say that but i think they’re
36:04
obviously they’re way more known in europe than in the us and so that’s
36:10
that’s part of the reason why you know i’m partnering up with uh with ajl
36:15
but basically ajl provides consulting services all the way from private equity to
36:21
investing and you know mergers and acquisitions all the way down to you know 50 unit operators and you know helping them with
36:28
their linen counts and you know basic on the ground operations and everything in between right
36:35
they also uh you know as tech startups are
36:40
starting up you know ajl also provides consulting to kind of strategically help the startup
36:48
uh you know develop the product get in front of the right people get the investments and all that so it’s
36:54
basically all facets of the short-term rental industry i don’t know if simon agrees with this
36:59
but my analogy is it’s like the management consultant
37:05
of the short-term rental industry um you know just focus on the short-term rental industry right sure and we can
37:12
help with business operations across the board um and so my role is essentially
37:19
you know ajl has had clients in australia and southeast asia obviously in europe and in north america and in
37:25
south america but partly due to the time constraints partly because they’re physically based
37:30
in europe it’s very difficult to service the us market yeah and so my role is to
37:37
basically you know expand ajl services across all in all
37:42
businesses in the us and obviously i’m more
37:47
i come from the underground you know operations technical you know that type of consulting right
37:53
yeah um but already in the past two weeks um it’s been eye-opening to see kind of
38:00
the the breadth you know of activity and things that this industry
38:08
uh uh you know can have impact on and so
38:13
i’m all on board i’m excited yeah um you know it’s
38:18
this was definitely not the path that i imagined right yeah um i always imagine you know
38:25
you know ohana stay or tech tape you know and not just be focusing and just plowing away and these things are all
38:31
going on right but being able to work with ajl is you know is a is an amazing opportunity for
38:38
sure and yeah so that’s that’s where where the stands well let me ask you a question as a founder
38:45
uh you know you have your own businesses um you’re doing this with ajl what what’s it look like for for you on
38:51
a day to day when it comes to time management how do you how do you balance out your your i know it gets crazy like
38:57
in people like i don’t even have the same answer i don’t have the same answer i used to have where i was like oh i got
39:02
a very detailed calendar and blah blah blah sometimes you just can’t do it you have to go you have to go off your schedule
39:09
go out of your habits your routines whatever but i’m just kind of curious you you have so much uh that you’ve
39:14
built um you you’re you’re a very good when it comes to like when i think of
39:19
you and what you’ve built with ohana stays with hearing tech tape and now being with ajl i think that you’re you’re quality you just do really good
39:26
quality uh whether it’s service building a management company that you know builds good quality of guest
39:32
experience good revenue good operations like it’s just very good there’s not a part that i’m not like oh well you could
39:37
probably improve on this area you know like you’re very detailed and i like that but how do you manage your time how
39:43
do you you know obviously there’s some key aspects of your of your businesses that have automation involved
39:48
you have va’s but i i don’t know i just as a founder i’m always curious to hear
39:54
founders day-to-day day-to-days you know their their habits their their routines the things that they create and do for
39:59
themselves that work out for uh for them yeah there are lots of things to improve
40:06
so many things right but um uh
40:12
i think the key issue key thing that kind of helps me is
40:19
i started you know becoming an entrepreneur you know creating my own companies yeah um i
40:26
started that actually my why is actually my family right so
40:31
my my wife my kids you know grandparents and everything yeah so part of why i
40:38
started this crazy venture was so that i would have time with
40:44
my family i wanted to grow up with my kids you know i didn’t want to miss it
40:49
and then be like oh man you guys are leaving you know leaving the house yeah and so that’s part of the foundation and
40:56
i you know i i lose focus obviously sometimes um but
41:02
yeah but that’s kind of the overall outline that that i work with right
41:08
and then so between ohana stay and tech tape to me it’s all the same thing right yeah separate services
41:15
but it’s the same exact business and so it to me it doesn’t feel like two different businesses it’s you know using
41:21
the same system and helping to solve problems so that’s not all that challenging right
41:28
now um obviously with onboarding with ajl
41:33
that’s going to create some you know additional time constraints and everything and that
41:39
i’ll figure out as as i go along the other thing that i do is i live and die by my calendar
41:46
um and so you know i have my calendar i
41:51
finally got my wife to start using the calendar the way we need to and so you know
41:58
yeah booking like date nights and everything or blocking off time please
42:03
if it’s something that like my time has to be blocked out there’s a calendar where she blocks that out right that’s
42:08
awesome um and you know my schedule is pretty much available for anyone to book right if
42:15
anyone wants to you know chat there’s a calendly link right
42:20
um but then i also have big blocks of time that i i block out weekends i block out completely i’m saying so i i guess i
42:28
tried to you know kind of create what the boundaries are that i’m
42:33
willing to to do uh and then out of that within that
42:39
you know the remainder of the time that’s where i need to kind of figure out what i need to focus on
42:45
i think i’m pretty awesome i’m pretty good at when i start feeling overwhelmed i’m
42:51
pretty good at taking a step back and saying um
42:56
what are the most you know urgent or most critical things that i need to be working on or what are
43:02
you know the most value driving things that i need to be working on and so that i can focus on that at the
43:08
time that i need to and i think it’s it’s that discipline of you know
43:14
blocking out my boundaries and then working within that uh i don’t know that’s
43:20
all i can say but i have to say recently my schedule has gotten a lot busier yeah
43:26
and so you know i’m trying to keep that you know true well it’s good that you and a lot of
43:32
people if i ask them that question outside the podcast or like in person um a lot of
43:37
them don’t have like that self-awareness to know like when they’re burning out or when they need to block off like hey i just need to step back and like what are
43:43
the top priorities i need to focus on and kind of cut out the noise right because we get so i don’t know at least i do i feel like i
43:50
get hit so many different directions with different things it’s like it’s like oh my gosh i want to hit all of them right you want to be you don’t
43:55
want to be that guy that gets too busy to to work with people or to to talk to somebody or to give an opinion or to
44:02
whatever i don’t know um and i actually had a like interesting time at um the live res
44:09
partner conference uh talking with andrew bate uh ceo of safety and he’s like you know there’s gonna be a point where you’re gonna you’re not gonna be
44:15
able to talk to everybody and you’re gonna you know be too busy for for some people and that’s that’s okay and i was like well
44:22
but i don’t want to get that way and and i i think it’s very good for
44:28
for us as entrepreneurs especially in this industry you know to be very self-aware of
44:34
you know our or why i love that you mentioned your why i saw you post uh on facebook a picture with you and your son
44:39
going to the barber shop and i saw the great listen that i want to keep going like yeah as long as he’ll let me yeah
44:46
get a haircut with him right yeah no that’s great i i’m a big fan of that like i just uh you know me and my dad
44:52
were never close as as as a kid but you know i was an adult now with him actually i mean he was there yeah well yeah and i
44:59
think last night my son his middle school uh he was one of the
45:05
recipients of a character award right and i was so proud of him yeah we went
45:11
and you know i love my dad you know everything but as i was going it was kind of like a flashback i was like you
45:17
know what my dad never came to any of these things for me right and i had a little
45:22
you know a little tear in my eye as i was going i was also so happy that i could
45:28
he you know he’s like oh whatever but i was so happy that i could be there to celebrate you know this moment with him
45:34
yeah and having this kind of a work life balance
45:40
is what’s allowing me to do this and so you know i wouldn’t trade it for the world sure and i’m i’m like legit like close
45:47
to crying because it brings up like memories of of my childhood stuff as well like
45:52
yeah it’s it’s really important i think you know when we’re talking about like you’re thinking about those moments but your son now is
45:59
going to be the opposite he’s going to be thinking about when he’s going to the school with his kid um he’s going to be
46:04
having a happy tear in his eye because like man my dad went to all my stuff so of course i’m going to go he will be like oh man
46:10
it was because it was so cheesy when my dad came with me right so i don’t know how it’ll work out but i was just really
46:16
happy that i could be you know there yeah no i love that i love that well that’s a
46:22
that makes me really happy and i think that’s a good note um for for us to leave off on the podcast a happy
46:28
father-son moment that’s always a good always a good one for the audience um john i always like to ask all the
46:34
listeners uh before we end the podcast where’s the best place that we can connect with you
46:40
social media website anything like that email whatever you want you tell the people where they where they should go
46:45
and we’ll we’ll send them that way yeah i think um the best email address or website right
46:52
now to find me and contact me email is john.on that’s j-o-h-n
46:58
dot a-n at get tech tape dot com g-e-t t-e-c-h
47:06
t-a-p-e dot com and then the website is techtape.com
47:11
and you know there’s a way to reach out to me that way the website is very bare so it doesn’t explain what it is but um
47:18
you can find me that way um i’m very active on linkedin as well uh
47:24
and facebook so especially on linkedin i pretty much accept any uh any connection request
47:31
yeah well if you connect with me that way then you know you can kind of see some of my uh you know my posts and my thoughts love
47:38
it love it well we’ll make sure we put everything in the show notes so that way people that are listening uh whether
47:43
they’re driving and you know going to click on it after they’re done driving don’t don’t listen or don’t podcast and
47:49
drive i guess if that makes sense but yeah we’ll make sure it’s all in the show notes so that everyone has access to you i love your story and i’m just
47:55
super thankful to have you on the podcast uh it’s been a really good time talking to you so you heard it first slick talkers go
48:01
ahead check out the show notes and we’ll see you guys again next week
48:07
thanks well [Applause]
48:13
thank you so much for listening and thank you to our show partners for making slick talk the hospitality podcast possible we hope you enjoyed the
48:20
show and we would love to connect with you outside of the podcast so you can follow us on all of our social media
48:25
channels for daily hospitality content or find us on slicktalkvpodcast.com
48:31
and don’t forget to rate review and subscribe so you never miss an episode i’m your host will slickers and we will
48:37
see you guys all again next week [Music]
48:52
you