ROI-Driven STR Design: How Guest Avatars Shape Profitable Rentals with Terri-Leigh Huleis

Summary and Highlights

👤 Meet Terri-Leigh Huleis

Terri-Leigh Huleis is the founder and creative director of Found Home Co., a boutique short-term rental design studio known for creating elevated, ROI-driven spaces that guests remember and owners profit from. Based in Colorado with a nationwide reach, she blends her background in design, real estate investing, and hospitality to help property owners transform ordinary homes into high-performing destinations.

What started from necessity—wanting more investment properties while her husband maxed out his W2 lending capacity—has grown into a thriving operation with three full-time employees and 12 contract designers. Found Home Co. now serves clients from first-time hosts with modest budgets to enterprise operators investing $250,000 in ski property furnishings.

Beyond designing for clients, Terri-Leigh is an investor herself, operating her own portfolio of short-term rentals, long-term rentals, and flips across multiple states.

Connect with Terri-Leigh:

• 🌐 Website: www.foundhomeco.com
• 📸 Instagram: @foundhome_co
• 💼 LinkedIn: Terri-Leigh Huleis

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🎯 Why Guest Avatar Is Everything in STR Design

The conversation quickly zeroed in on what Terri-Leigh considers the most critical element of any successful property: knowing exactly who you’re designing for.

Her approach goes far beyond basic demographics. Found Home Co. has developed a custom GPT that produces detailed guest avatars—down to what activities they’ll do on days one through five of their stay, their occupation, even their dog’s name. This granular understanding shapes every design decision from furniture selection to branded touchpoints.

But here’s the crucial insight: the market research must align with the owner’s comfort level. Even if data shows bachelorette parties are the highest-paying guests in a market, Terri-Leigh won’t recommend targeting them if the owner is risk-averse or has neighbors who might complain about late-night noise.

This philosophy directly translates to building a direct booking brand that guests remember. When you know your guest avatar intimately, every touchpoint—from property design to website copy to email sequences—speaks directly to that person.

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🏠 The Branded Stay Revolution

One of the most compelling segments focused on how branding separates forgettable Airbnb listings from properties that generate direct bookings and repeat guests.

Terri-Leigh’s team doesn’t just design interiors—they create complete brand identities including logos, taglines, mood descriptions, and even signature scents using Aroma 360 devices. These elements get woven throughout properties in thoughtful ways: custom doormats with property logos, branded outdoor cushions, and neon signs that transform utility spaces into memorable moments.

Take “The Marquee,” a recent Denver project. The property features mountain peak-inspired “M” branding on everything from the welcome mat to outdoor cushions to a custom neon sign in a secret bookcase-turned-silent-disco that reads “Welcome to Club Marquee.”

The strategic brilliance? When guests remember “The Marquee Denver” instead of “Airbnb listing #31754,” they’ll search that name when planning their next trip—and your direct booking website should be waiting to capture them.

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⚙️ Systems That Saved the Business

Terri-Leigh’s candid admission about fighting systemization resonated with every entrepreneur who’s ever burned out trying to do everything themselves.

The breaking point came while simultaneously adopting a baby, managing multiple property installs, handling client calls, and trying to maintain some semblance of family life. Working until midnight became normal. Home-cooked meals became peanut butter toast. The fun disappeared.

Her husband, working in business development, had been encouraging systems thinking for months. She finally listened when ChatGPT emerged and gave her the ability to rapidly learn new processes—from setting up QuickBooks properly to creating SOPs to formalizing contracts.

The lesson for hosts building their direct booking strategy: systems aren’t constraints. They’re what allow you to scale without sacrificing quality or burning out.

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🤖 Using AI Without Losing Your Edge

The discussion around AI tools provided practical wisdom for anyone using technology to streamline their business.

Terri-Leigh’s custom GPT for market research and guest avatars has become indispensable, but she offered a critical warning: AI tends to agree with you. She’s learned to explicitly ask the system to “rerun this from a more critical point of view” to get balanced perspectives.

She also noted that getting useful AI output requires substantial input. Garbage in, garbage out applies especially to large language models. The hosts who get generic, useless content are often the ones providing minimal context about their goals, market, and ideal guests.

This insight connects directly to becoming a better AI writer in short-term rentals—the framework matters as much as the tool.

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🔄 From Installs to Small Boutique Hotels

When asked about future aspirations, Terri-Leigh’s eyes lit up discussing small boutique hotels and multi-unit retreats.

Found Home Co. recently completed a 14-unit project in St. Pete Beach, Florida, and a 9-unit lake retreat in Michigan—complete with a common space transformed from an old garage into a branded game hall with custom signage, vending machines, and resort maps.

These projects showcase economies of scale: using consistent furniture pieces across units while giving each room its own color scheme and identity keeps costs manageable while maintaining the boutique feel that commands premium rates.

For operators considering similar moves, this represents the future of hospitality—branded experiences that stand apart from the OTA commodity game and drive sustainable direct booking businesses.

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⚡ Rapid Fire Highlights

📚 Book Recommendation: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. Terri-Leigh describes it as not groundbreaking but hitting you in a warm place that makes you want to deliver excellence. (For the historical romance fans, she also recommends anything by Lisa Kleypas.)

💭 Mindset Advice for Starting Something New: Look for advice in the right places. When Terri-Leigh started investing in real estate, trusted friends who hadn’t done it called her ideas scary and risky. Once she found people who had already achieved what she wanted, nothing seemed scary—because they’d already done it.

🎯 Tactical Advice for Direct Bookings: Analyze your ideal guest avatar deeply—not at the surface level. Understand who you’re targeting, how that matches your risk profile, and then build your branding around that clarity. Otherwise, you’ll spend hours on Canva creating things that don’t drive results.

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🎧 Listen to the Full Episode

This conversation only scratched the surface of Terri-Leigh’s insights on scaling a design business, creating memorable guest experiences, and building systems that support sustainable growth.

Whether you’re furnishing your first property or refreshing an underperforming portfolio, understanding how professional designers think about guest avatars and brand identity will transform your approach to hospitality.

👉 Ready to build a direct booking website that matches your property’s brand identity? Visit CraftedStays.co to start your free trial and turn your branded stays into direct booking machines.

Transcription

Terri-Leigh

Terri: Knowing your guest avatar, identifying who your ideal guest is, what do they want? Why are they coming? What are their expectations? What do you need to provide them with so that they book for more nights, more money, more times. So repeat bookings and what’s gonna make them. We work in some very saturated markets, and saturated is not a bad word, it just means there’s demand there.

Terri: Why are these guests gonna book your property over the others? Um, we really try to understand the heart of that, and then not only just identifying who that ideal, ideal guest is, but making sure that it matches up with our client because it’s all good and well, if like the highest paying, you know. Most booking guests in a market is a team of 16 bachelorettes, like phenomenal.

Terri: But if you are conservative, and I mean conservative with risk, if you have neighbors on either side that you’re really worried they’re gonna have a problem. If you don’t want to be staying up at night with calls about how things are broken and somebody threw your furniture in the pool and you’ve got strippers dancing on your counters.

Terri: That is not going to be a good match. And we would never, never, never, never. Even if the market research told us like, that is who this, these people need to be hosting, we would never suggest that if that didn’t match up to your own goals as the client.

Gil: Before we bring on our guest, I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it all to work.

Gil: But if your site isn’t really built to convert. You’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire, and even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.

Gil: You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build craft estates. It’s purpose built for short term rentals and designed from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into bookings and you can keep on testing and improving.

Gil: As you learn, you can make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to Craft Stays co and start your free trial. Now let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing.

 Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to the book Solid Show, the podcast where we bring in top operators in operations, digital marketing, and hospitality. On today’s show, I have Terri-Leigh from Found Home Co. She is an STR designer. She’s an investor herself. She’s done long-term rentals, flips, and short-term rentals.

 Gil: On today’s show, she walks us through how she thinks through the entire design process. Through and through and how she uses AI in the process, what she thinks about from a branding perspective, all the different moments, um, and really how she’s also scaled her design company from operating herself to having a full blown team and some of the learnings along the way.

 Gil: So I am super thrilled to have her on the show today and just really have a candid discussion about how she’s grown her design studio and some of the projects that she’s working on. Now, we also get to tackle or talk a little bit about what she’s looking forward to doing more of. So without further ado, let’s bring her in.

Gil : Hi, Terri-Leigh, welcome to the show.

 Terri: Hi Gil. Thanks for having me.

Gil : Yeah, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on. Before we kinda get started, do you mind giving folks a quick introduction on who you are?

 Terri: Sure. I’m Terri-Leigh Huleis. I’m the owner of Founder of Found Home Co. We’re a boutique SDR Design studio. I am doing work nationwide.

Gil : Awesome. Give me a little bit of backstory. How did you get into design? Like how did you end up. Always, I’m always curious about how people kind of fall into the different parts of the industry. Like even though short term rental is such a kind of known thing, I feel like folks have really carved out their own space in, in things.

Gil : And when I look at it, when people carve out their spaces, like it really comes from very different backgrounds too. So it’s, it’s very interesting. I would love to kind of hear kind of how you kind of fell into specifically short-term rental design.

 Terri: Sure. Um, so like most things in my life, it came from necessity. I was in residential interior design pretty casually, um, before this, but my husband and I had started investing in real estate and all on his W2. I was a stay at home mom to three, then four boys once we

 Terri: adopted our fourth. Uh, yeah, it’s a lot. Um, but he reached the cap of what we were able to do financially on a W2. And I just kept saying, I want more houses. I want more property. We have to leave this legacy. There’s a lot of mouths to feed. Um, and he mentioned, well, we need to have, uh, we need to, you know, increase income. And the easiest thing I thought. I can already do interior design. I’ve already created our own, um, successful SDRs. Let me transition, see how it goes. Um, we started offering our services to a really small network of people. Um, I’d like to think we did a phenomenal job because we just started and started running and just took off and haven’t stopped since.

 Terri: And we do about 64 of these, um, a year,

Gil : 64 projects a year. And Is it 64 projects a year. Um. or do you have a No, no. So I started doing everything. I would do the design, I would do the install, I would do the cleaning, I would do all of this. This was about four years ago. Um, but we quickly grew and we are now three full-time employees, 12 contract designers, and we work with a massive network of handyman contractors, wallpapers and installers.

Gil : So you’re not just doing just the design side, you’re also doing the staging and the actual, like putting it together of it all.

 Terri: Yeah. Yeah. So depending on which market we’re really, really predominant in, um, Colorado and Florida. But if you’re outside of those states, we’ll work with contractors and vendors in those states. We like to call that project coordination. We put together your dream team. Um, we sort of schedule it, coordinate everything, and then oversee everything to make sure it’s done the right way.

 Terri: Uh, but in Colorado and Florida, we will do full installs. Yeah.

Gil : Nice. Now that you have grown to three full-time employees and 12 contract designers, if, if I heard that Correct? Mm-hmm.

Gil : what is kind of your role or your day-to-day look like versus kind of your, your team there? Are you still in the weeds and doing the design yourself or, or now do you like, okay, you, you have a wealth of resources that can take on the design from beginning to end and you are more kind of overseeing it.

Gil : Like kind of what, what does your role play in the, in the company now?

 Terri: So we do have a studio lead. Um, she is the one who kind of oversees the entire design team, but then I oversee her and, um, our studio assistant, um, Leah Hale. And, uh, I can get involved in design when I want to, when I’m feeling super passionate or when there’s a need. Um, which there often is when you’re taking on as many projects as we are. Um, we, we also have a sort of. Seven to 10 day lead delivery time. So we’ll deliver a full home in seven to 10 days. So I will step in where I’m wanted and sometimes where I’m not wanted, uh, but I am trying to learn how to back up out of that, especially as our, um, our real estate portfolio grows. There’s a need for me to be there a little bit more, but they could do it without me. I just, but in.

Gil : I, I empathize that as a fellow entrepreneur, like a lot of times I’ll step into the design of thing, like we do website design. So I, I, I step into website designs every so often I will do architecture designs with the team, or I’ll even do coding every so often, and. I probably shouldn’t necessarily do all those things and I, I’m sure that sometimes our team is like, we got this, but I empathize with you.

Gil : There’s something that gives you energy when you type, when you do those types of things. That’s why you started the company in the first place is because you enjoy those types of things and I feel like if you rob yourself out of some of those early joys, yes. It doesn’t scale. Yes. Do you have people doing those types of things?

Gil : It also gives you energy and I, I feel like

 Terri: it

 Terri: does, yes, is one of those resources that you have to be very cognizant of, but like to balance the time is the overall energy that you bring into every single day. And you have to figure out ways to like fill up the energy jar because off too often enough, like you can let the company kind of rides you down and you’ll have your ups and downs and right, will kinda just go along with it.

Gil : So I totally feel you on that one.

 Terri: Right, and we, we are a hundred percent referral based. So to me, customer satisfaction is also number one. So that’s where I find it really, really hard to not be involved because when I do see something that I’ve been so scrappy since the beginning, I’ve been involved in every little aspect of every part of the business, that when anything is not a hundred percent, I’m not afraid. I’m advocating for my clients to step in and make it right. My team is phenomenal. They are wonderful, but there’s a lot on them. And if I see even like the tiniest little thing, which is probably, you know, perfect, but I want it better than perfect. Um, I’ll step in. Yeah.

Gil : I feel you on that one. Um.

 Terri: Our poor

 Terri: teams. we have our, like, support queue and I know that like my support team will answer things at a pretty reasonable speed. But if I have the Fast enough, well, like sometimes they’re, they’re helping another customer. And I have,

Gil : and we have in-app, like live chat and like, and there’s something special about getting your answers right away when you can get them.

Gil : And so if I can deliver that for someone and my customer service agents are busy helping another customer like. I’ll step up, I’ll roll up my sleeves on, on things, um, 

 Terri: and.

 Terri: truly, this probably is part of why our stays are successful because we are so focused on, um, the customer. And that is what hospitality, that’s what hospitality is. You do have to be willing to do whatever it takes to, you know, deliver that five star experience. And I do that for my design business, and I do it for my SDRs and even my long-term tenants, you know.

Gil : Yeah, I mean there’s something special about the industry where I think the folks that really do enjoy it, they have this. Feeling of being in service of to others. Um, and that, that is like a very core value to them is like, I’m in, I’m here to serve others. I’m, and yes, we, we come into it maybe be because of investments and, and other reasons there, but I think the ones that really stay in the industry, they still answering guest messages on their own.

Gil : Yes, they may hire teams, but um. I think the, the folks that really enjoy it and, and are here for the long run really understand that the hospitality in it, and even on the services side, like when we’re offering other services, there’s a, there’s a level of hospitality that doesn’t go away. It kind of bleeds through the different parts of our lives.

 Terri: As it should.

Gil : Yeah. Do you remember the first ever client that you took on and kind of what that experience was like? yes. I, I do remember that. Well, I mean, I guess I was my first, first client. Um, I was the case study, the Guinea pig. And, um, we could talk about those projects if you want to, but my very first, first client was actually the one who went on to, uh, promote our business in a way that we have found. Have four Xed the business in, um, the last sort of two years, just from their involvement in the referrals.

 Terri: Um, they own an STR, uh, real estate agency here in Denver. Um, my husband met. One of their friends on an airplane mentioned me and I spoke to them the very next morning and right away they put me on their multimillion dollar property. Um, it was a bridge house built literally over on a bridge, over a creek flowing in the mountains of Colorado. And, um. I learned everything on that project, but I always say make it till you make it. Not fake it, because I would never fake it, but I made it till I made it on, on that project. And we learned things about logistics and our favorite vendors and, you know, install instructions and teams and just, um, what it takes to design a full property.

 Terri: And this was not a small property either. Multi, multi bedroom, multi-building building, uh, bridge House in Colorado in the wintertime.

 Terri: Um, so yes, that was my very first project and I thought if I could do that. I could do anything.

Gil : That’s true. That’s true. Have you taken on another project of that caliber since, or have they more been more modest, No ma. Many, many. So we like to meet our clients where they are. We are an ROI driven, ideal guest, targeted design studio. So if your, uh, property is a two bedroom, one bath and it drives $125 a night, we’re gonna design to that. If your property is a seven bedroom, um, ski condo in VA Colorado, which we’ve just had the great pleasure of doing, and your budget is $250,000. We’ll do that. Um, so no, we’ve done, we’ve done everything big to small. Um, something we’re seeing a lot of now is refreshes. So people who had existing properties are feeling the squeeze, are feeling, um, comp, they’re competitive markets. Uh, those are are really great because for little investment there’s big ROI.

 Terri: So everything, everything in, in between.

Gil : As you think back at that first project, and I empathize with the, the make it to you make it thing, like the first version of crafted days. It’s nothing like what it was today, but when we deliver that very first version of it. It felt good for our customers. It feels different now. It feels much, much better and it’s much more polished now and it has a much more capability.

Gil : But as you think back of kind of taking on that first project versus like how you take on projects now, what’s, what’s been the biggest change or what’s kind of the biggest learnings as you’ve gone through every single project and maybe how you approach it differently now than you may have before?

 Terri: sure. So the. End product was the same. It is what it always is. It’s what it was. My commitment from the very beginning. I won’t do something unless I can, you know, deliver a product I’m gonna be proud of. So that hasn’t changed. It’s the every little bit in between. So we are massive into systemization processes, um, and just sort of making everything faster, smoother, and a more streamlined experience for both the client. Our team because obviously as we’ve bought on people, um, to not have that be smooth and organized would be a nightmare. So mainly

 Terri: the back end. The back end has changed a whole lot.

Gil : nice And has, have you always had that like systems thinking Nope. Nope.

Gil : What, what was, what was kind of the revelation there? What was that like?

 Terri: I fought it

 Terri: hard, hardcore. I was a stay at home mom, um, and we had a little hobby farm and life was quiet and I spent my days baking apple pies and, you know, doing whatever I wanted, taking care of our chickens and goats and our horses. Um, and that was my life. And when I started the business, it was like, well, let’s just see how it goes.

 Terri: I’m very much a, let’s just see how it goes person. And, um, my husband is in business development and he just kept. You know, egging me on. He is like, this is gonna grow. I see this is gonna be successful and if, you know, you’ve gotta put the the right things in place. Now in the beginning, and I didn’t listen.

 Terri: And I didn’t listen and I didn’t listen, and we just saw how it was gonna go. And then when things rapidly. Picked up, um, I had to go and rework everything. Um, and I think that was such a shock to the system and was just such an overwhelming process. I, uh, will never do that again. I will listen to my husband.

Gil : What, what was that breaking point where you felt like, oh, things are starting to fall apart, and like he may maybe, maybe he had something like

Gil : that was worth listening to.

 Terri: Yeah, no. So we would do, um, I was doing everything. I would be there at the installs, obviously. I started hiring handyman and, and builders and that kind of thing, but I was at every single install. And, um, this was while we were adopting a baby. We were in the process of fostering and then adopting a baby.

 Terri: And so there were. Calls with the city or, or the county. Uh, twice a week there were doctor’s visits, there were visits with the paternal father, um, with his father, sorry. And there was, um, visits with, uh, the GAL and all of these expectations while I’m trying to install properties. My other three kids, um, I went from cooking, like home cooked meals to saying like, well, there’s, you know, peanut butter toast. It doesn’t get better than that.

 Terri: And, um, working till working till midnight, and that lasted, uh, about three or four months. And I just got to be really, really burned out. And I thought, well, this is not feeling fun anymore. And when things start to not feel fun for me, um, I think that’s when I noticed that I need to make a change.

 Terri: And, and we did. And we started to get more serious about software that we were using, um, processes. Um. Chat. GPT came on the, on the, on the scene too. And that like was incredible because I’m not the kind of person who has the bandwidth to be able to learn in a slow way. But I, for me to just be able to sit, you know, like, how do I do this?

 Terri: How do I create like SOPs? How do I, uh, formalize everything into QuickBooks Online? How do I do that? That was a, was a game changer for us.

Gil : Was there anyone pivotal in that whole process that helped kind of shepherd that? Or did you kinda have to My husband, own? Yeah.

 Terri: my husband, while he was holding down his W2, and also wrestling with the kids as well. Um, he spent a lot of late nights with me learning how to, you know, set up QuickBooks properly and learning how to set up the right contracts and, uh, managing our taxes and, uh, you know, service agreements and that kind of thing.

 Terri: So, for sure for.

Gil : Are you still that scrappy person? If you were to take on a new project, would, are you still that scrappy person at the root, or have you now realized like, oh no, if I’m gonna start something new, I’m gonna start thinking about the systems Oh no, I’m still scrappy. Nope, I’m still scrappy. He was at, my husband was outta town last week for an entire week in Costa Rica on work. I had the kids. Um, we’ve signed on nine new projects since last week, Sunday. And I decided it’s time to move entire design platforms. And I messaged a team, I’m like, Hey, team meeting. And we moved over in that week. So, but we’re in it now. Honestly, we’re in it now. I, I feel like we ripped off the bandaid and we are all the better for it and instead of taking months to do it, we took four days and, um, we are the better for it for sure.

Gil : Awesome. I love the, I love the conviction you would. If you ever moved to the city life in San Francisco, um, and you find yourself in, in Silicon Valley, you would fit right into the scrappiness. Yeah.

 Terri: Yeah. No, for for sure.

Gil : Um. Right before the show, we had a, we had a chance to talk a little bit about kind of your perspective on kind of how you think about design and kind of the process that we went through. Talk to me a little bit about what are one of the things that you really think are core when you’re onboarding or you’re taking on new project, before you even get into the design, what are the things that you look for or you do research on?

 Terri: Yeah, so this is massive, massive, massive, massive for us. And, and I know it bleeds into other areas of the industry. So maybe I’m beating a dead horse here, but knowing your guest avatar, identifying who your ideal guest is, what do they want? Why are they coming? What are their expectations? Um, what do you need to provide them with so that they book for more nights, more

 Terri: money, more times to repeat bookings. Um, and, and what’s gonna make them. Book your property over the. We, we work in some very saturated markets, and saturated is not a bad word. Um, it just means there’s demand there. Uh, why are these guests gonna book your property over the others? Um, we really try to understand the heart of that, and then not only just identifying who that ideal, ideal guest is, but making sure that it matches up with our client because it’s all good and well, if like the, the highest paying, you know. Most booking guests in a market is, um, a team of 16 bachelorettes, like phenomenal. But if you are conservative, and I mean conservative with risk, um, if you have neighbors on either side that you’re really worried they’re gonna have a problem. Um, if don’t want to be staying up at night with calls about how things are broken and somebody threw your furniture in the pool and you’ve got strippers dancing on your counters. Um, that is not going to be a good match. And we would never, never, never, never. Even if the market research told us like, that is who this, these people need to be hosting, we would never suggest that if that didn’t match up to your own goals as the client.

Gil : Yeah, so there’s, there’s one. It’s kind of like really one, understanding what the market need is and where the demand is for that specific market, but.

Gil : It’s also really trying to figure out whether or not there’s alignment with those demand. And it could be that one, or it could be something else, but 

 Terri: Yeah, and, and it’s very rarely that there’s one solid ideal guest avatar in a market. There’s usually about two or three, so let’s choose the one that best suits your financial goals and your risk profile.

Gil : how do you help and guide folks through a piece? We, and, and the reason why I kind of asked this or kind of like wanna double click on this is because a lot of times I’ll work with. Property managers to build out their website. And we see the same thing when people come to us. They may not know who their ideal guest avatar is, or they have forgotten that, oh, after they’ve designed and am amenitized their place, they have to, they have to think about their ideal guest avatar when they’re building the content on their website.

Gil : And a lot of folks will say, oh, I, my place can do business stays, it can do couples, and they, they kind of peanut butter themselves across multiple niches There.

 Terri: yeah,

 Terri: yeah. a lot of times it’s really kind of helping them and guiding them through the process of, okay, let’s try to identify one or two that you can narrow it down and maybe we can come up with language that kind of spreads across those different categories.

Gil : And hopefully the categories are not too dissimilar. But when you don’t niche down, it’s hard for you to really create the content that resonates with folks when they’re visiting your website. And I feel like it’s a, it’s a very analogous. Uh, kind of seen to also designing your place. You wanna Abso absolutely where folks really, when they come in, they know that this place was designed specifically for their type of stay.

Gil : Um, so when you’re working with a property manager or homeowner, um, and they haven’t gone through that analysis, like how do you convince them that it’s worthwhile to niche down on one or two?

 Terri: So, because we are now so process oriented and we do around 20 new client calls a week, and those are people just trying to find information, we do complimentary calls. Um. We had to, and this is where everything in my life is out of necessity. Um, we had to enact a STR design questionnaire, so before anyone even gets to. Reach us. They are being gently funneled, not so gently funneled, um, down into an SDR, uh, design questionnaire. And that questionnaire has been designed in a way that there are no multiple choices.

Gil : Yep.

 Terri: Um, and that’s with color. Uh, guest avatar, age group a DR. Do you want pet? Do you want TVs in every room? Um, what, uh, give us an example of a property you love One property.

 Terri: Give us an example of something that you don’t love. One example, um, they are forced to build this in a very, uh, it feel, it just feels natural. They’re just answering a, a questionnaire to get a call with us. Um, and. In my experience, we have never had that not match up and it’s before we discuss anything else.

 Terri: So there’s no pressure on this, there’s no like, expectation in their head to like, make the right answers or, uh, build some, you know, something in their mind. They’re just like, oh, to get a call, I gotta answer these questions. We have never ever had a client where that, uh, questionnaire didn’t match up to who ended up being right for them. Which is pretty cool. It’s not always right for the property. You know, we might have to tweak the actual end avatar a little bit, but they’re uh, they always answer really honestly. And it just works out all the way through.

Gil : Does that become basically input of all the market research you’re trying to figure out? Like, okay, um, let’s do market research, but let’s not go all over the place. Let’s try to concentrate it towards how they’re thinking about kind of how, how they want their ideal property to look like.

 Terri: Right, right. So we, uh, the market research is honest information. So we built a custom GPT, um, it’s in studio, it’s all ours. Um, using inputs that we have found we need. Um, and it’s, we’ve kind of built it up over the years, so it’s getting better and better and sharper and sharper. Um, but. It will spit out a very honest, very detailed picture down to what these guests will be doing day 1, 2, 3, 4, and five of their stay. Um, what do they do for a job? What’s their dog’s name like, you know, it just, it just builds this really cool, um, ideal guest avatar. Um, and we see. Kind of how that matches up with, with the client. Um, the client’s desires and the client’s risk profile. Like I said, um, if we run it a couple times, tweaking a couple things, um, it, you know, we, we take the client’s question, maybe it’s, maybe it’s spitting out 20 to 30 year olds who wanna go to rages in, in Denver. And our client isn’t like that. And we’re like, well, our client’s ideal is say 30 to 50. Um, it’s gonna adjust and it’s gonna maybe move from like rages in Denver at. Clubs and it’s gonna move to, you know, Sunday Red Rock shows and it’s gonna create like a, an avatar based on that. So that, that’s really cool.

 Terri: Yeah, yeah, also using any market data as well to kind of inform kind of like the, the overall demand on that?

Gil : Or is it really given that you have a pretty high concentration of properties in specific regions, you know the region quite well, you know what, what really resonates and what doesn’t? Like what, what 

 Terri: We do. 

Gil : are you Yeah.

 Terri: Yeah. So in our, in our main markets, like, um, you know, Denver, outwards and almost all across Colorado, I will get a call and I’d be like, oh yeah, Boulder. Yes. Uh, even this little division, um, sunshine Estates, whatever, I’ll know exactly who we are targeting, um, in markets that we aren’t as aware.

 Terri: We just did a, uh, park City, Utah. Ski, big, beautiful ski property. Um, that was a new market to us. So then we’re relying on, um, air, DNA, um, uh, price labs, you know, some of those, uh, Airbnb ticks, all of those kinds of things. We’ll go and take a look at that, those, and see what we can, um, what we can find. There is a ton of free information out there, so it, it seems when you start looking at everything’s behind a. A paywall and those paywalls are worth it. Like I highly suggest doing it when you’re trying to find a property or trying to refresh a property. Um, but they’re, you know, if anyone who’s too scared to dig into it lightly because they’re like, ah, I don’t know if I wanna do this. I don’t wanna pay. There’s a ton of affordable or free information out there.

Gil : What are the types of things that you’re looking for when you look at Price Labs or RDNA?

 Terri: mm-hmm. So, occupancy, um, is major for us. Uh, a DR is major for us. Our clients come to us with financial goals. They’ve usually had a performer run by a real estate agency.

 Terri: And, um, so they’ve made the decision to target this property based on this information in the performa. And again, we just wanna make sure that, you know, it’s matching up if, if they are expecting an $850.

 Terri: Um, an IADR, um. But they are telling me they’ve got a furnishing budget of $28,000. We’re gonna have to have some, some confirmation, some conversations there. Um, so we’re looking for that. We’re looking at, um, common and desirable amenities in the area. Um, we’re looking at, we dig into reviews of top performers. So we’ll actually go and sit and read the reviews. Um, what are the, what are the client, what are the, um, guests loving? What are they hating? What is missing, um, in that market that’s doing really well in like markets adjacent and we try to be early adopters, adopters of those things.

Gil : Nice. Um, on the, kind of on our direct booking side of things. Brand is so, so important in really making sure that folks recognize you through all the different touch points. Whether or not that the, that’s in the physical space, whether that they be on social media, the emails that they get, the website there, that brand continuity kind of has to stay consistent.

Gil : At least that’s what we see with a lot of our

 Terri: a hundred

Gil : high performing. Like direct booking property managers there. How do, how do you see that? Is that I import as important for you when you’re designing the space? Talk to me a little bit about, kinda like overall, like, is brand even important in design

 Terri: yes.

 Terri: Absolutely. So, yeah,

Gil : and that might be a leading question there.

 Terri: Yeah. So, yes, absolutely. Um, when we are building out this market research and even built into our custom GPT, um, it will formulate a logo. A tagline, a full bio and a, um, what do they call it? They call it a mood. Um, so what is the guest experience when they walk in?

 Terri: What are they seeing? What textures are they feeling? Maybe there’s a smell because in some of our properties we put aroma 360 devices in. Phenomenal. Love it. Some people have issues with fragrance. I get it. But that is a massive, massive one for like brand recognition that I think we are doing. We’ve adopted from like the hotel industry. Um, uh, we build all of that out and we tell the clients. This information’s available to you. We, we build it so that we understand our design really, really well, and we’re gonna design to this, um, ideal guest in, in a deeper and more meaningful way than you can ever imagine. Uh, we’re gonna give you the logo, we’re gonna give you the tagline.

 Terri: We’re gonna give you, you know, the buyer, the mood. You have that information, and if you wanna run with it. Take it, take it and run with it. It’s yours. Like, we don’t, we don’t keep any of that. Um, and if they do decide to run with it, we will take that logo. We are gonna do on the porch, on the, on the front porch.

 Terri: We’re gonna do a custom sign with the logo, the house name. Um, we will sometimes, if there’s no place for a sign, we’re putting out a custom. Doormat. You know, you come in and it’s gonna say, we just did a phenomenal branded stay in Denver called the Marquee, a really, really beautiful property. Um, you arrive in the, it’s got we, the M is Mountain Peaks.

 Terri: And we did that on a black mat, like black, uh, a black mat with white mountain peaks, m in a, in a circle. Um, we took that through the whole exterior. There’s multiple exterior areas in the property. We did, um, that really cool m on all the outdoor cushions. Um, we ended having custom neon sign made. Um, we had it signed.

 Terri: There’s a little secret. Bookcase that you could open, um, and maybe just for storage or whatever, we turned it into a little silent disco and we had a sign made once you open the door, like there’s disco balls and whatever, and it says, welcome to Club Marquee. And, um, things like that are just doing so well. Um. Airbnb design, SDR design, hospitality design is not new. People are catching on. Um, it’s becoming more widespread and thank goodness for it no more, you know, grannys old sofa and that kind of thing. Um, amenities, number one driver of, uh, uh, a properties performance. Yes. Everybody’s catching onto that too.

 Terri: So we’re doing stargazing, NATS, and. Uh, hot tubs and yoga decks and saunas and whatever. Those are all phenomenal and incredible, but I believe the next, the next thing is boutique branded stays making guests feel for the same price as an Airbnb. Um, you’re getting a whole other level of stay, and we’re doing that.

 Terri: Um, we’re doing that through branding.

Gil : Yeah. And I think the interesting thing is that these elements are things that you put in place in the very beginning, and it’s, and a lot of times they’re not that expensive. Um, at all.

 Terri: Not at all. but it goes a long way to have someone feel like, oh, this isn’t just another commodity on Airbnb. This host has put in a lot of effort and they put in a lot of.

Gil : Like warming touches to it. I think that that really starts to resonate. Mm-hmm. uh, I, I don’t know if you have any anecdotes, but I imagine that this has huge impacts downstream when they’re leaving the stay. They’re not just thinking about Airbnb as the logo, they’re You’re no longer. Yeah, no, you’re no longer. Um, and you know, we love Airbnb. We love the OTAs. We do, we love them. But, um, they’re. There, there has to be more. There has to be more. And when you’re feeling the squeeze, um, of a competitive market, the more is direct booking to be honest. Um, and luckily, when you’re making these branded incredible stays, you’re no longer Airbnb.

 Terri: You are the marquee, you are Alpine 28, you are lodge 2 1 2. These are ones we’re, we’ve done. Um, you are these. Beautiful little mini retreats, which, which has been really, really fun and, and even the greater thing, so. You know, as a designer, I don’t wanna put signage all over the property. Like I hate that it’s necessary in, in certain ways, and we do it tastefully when we have to. But if you know your pillows, have the m and your signage says, welcome to the marquee. Well, when they’re booking another stay in Denver, say a year down the line, well they’re gonna remember that. And instead of going to like find you on Airbnb or find you on another OTA, they’re just gonna simply like search.

 Terri: The marquee Denver, and hopefully your direct booking website comes up. Um, we, we do encourage clients when they adopt one of our branding sort of. Identities that you go hardcore and, and you’re making sure that everything online matches that, because that is gonna be a really big deal for you. Or if you’re talking about a friend, you’re not saying, oh, Airbnb number 3, 1, 7, 5, 4.

 Terri: You know, you’re gonna say, oh, I stayed at the marquee Denver. Well Sally so and so when, when it comes to her family vacation, she’s gonna be like, oh yeah, remember the Marquis? We should look at that. Um, and I feel like that is the trickle down.

Gil : Yeah. Yeah. Do you, so I’ll you brand the property themselves.

Gil : Do you help them with, if they have multiple properties, do you help them in really trying to figure out how do we weave that overall family umbrella brand? Or do you focus really on really making sure that the property and the brand of the property itself is elevated enough?

Gil : Like how do you think about kind of balancing the portfolio?

 Terri: So we have a client who is, um, on her fourth property with us. She has her overall, overall, um, private brand, and then each of her stays are very distinctly branded. Underneath that we have not really. Thought of, um, doing it in a way that makes sense on like that more global scale. I think for us, we just dive so hard into

 Terri: that area’s ideal market and so hard into that specific property’s identity that, um, it would be a little out of our comfort zone to to focus more on that, on that global stay. Um, but yeah, there is a, there’s a concept that we are working on and it’s. I, I don’t wanna give it away, but it’s da dah dah Denver, da da da cape coral, da da da, you know, whatever. Um, and that would be really cool and that. Uh, concept is the same color scheme, the same feel, textures, fabrics, smells, and that is gonna be nationwide. Um, but we, we’ve gone into that. It’s, it’s my own. I’m developing it from the very beginning, so that’s a little bit different, but it’s still gonna be, uh, all of the hallmark marks of a found home co, uh, design. Um, but with the, that real big branding push,

Gil : Yeah, I really like that.

Gil : Awesome. We. You usually end the show with three questions. I may ask you additional one this time, um, but this might be a good time for that. What’s a, first off, what’s a, a good book recommendation that you have For me, I’m a constant reader. Um, I’m trying to, I’m always looking for the next.

Gil : Good book and I’m always surprised to hear books that I’ve never heard before.

Gil : And yeah. Um, and a lot of times I’ll pull ’em up on Audible and I’ll listen to it. Um, 

 Terri: Okay. 

Gil : feel free to give me a common one or, or an uncommon one. But yeah, any book recommendation.

 Terri: Um, so I bet you never bet you never heard of this before. And this one’s for the ladies. Uh, I am a hardcore historical romance girl, so I’m gonna give you that first, but then I’m gonna give you my STR designer. Recommendation, but historical romance, anything by Lisa Clay Pass. This is just for the Girlies Boy’s not allowed. Um, and so I have to mention it like I’m her biggest fan. Um, but when it comes to actual SCR and, uh, you know, running a hospitality business, it’s one we’ve probably all heard of an all allread, but that’s for a reason. Um, unreasonable Hospitality is a phenomenal book. It’s not groundbreaking, it’s not earth shattering, but it just hits you in a warm place where you’re like, yes. I get it. I feel it. I want that. I wanna be that. Um, and it just drives you to a little excellence, so

 Terri: unreasonable hospitality. That has come up a few times on our Yeah. even, even within like the last like five recordings, that has come up as as well too. So that is def, that’s definitely a like a solid read for a new one specifically in our space. And even creating anything specifically in our space because it helps you understand really what our property managers really think through and they should be thinking through and how do we serve them in that same manner there.

Gil : So I love that recommendation.

 Terri: Okay.

 Terri: Good. second question, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

 Terri: Mm. So. This might bear be, uh, a little contrary to what other people might say, but look in the right places for advice. Look in the right places for advice. Don’t go

 Terri: asking the wrong people for advice on the things that they’ve never done. Um, you know, we always want to lean into our circle. But I think at the points where we wanna pivot in life and maybe we’re taking on something new, it’s moving away from where you already are. Um, and it can be, I found really damaging and especially in real estate, uh, because especially in this climate lately. Real estate is scary to a lot of people who haven’t already done it or made a jump. So when we first started talking about taking on investments and buying things like small apartment buildings that needed renovations or buying a property in. Very saturated, Cape Coral, Florida. And we are one of the most successful properties there. And we started at the very height of everything. Um, it’s because we first started to speak, uh, with people who we had trusted for other things. And, um, they were giving us advice. Well, I go, oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

 Terri: Or, well, that’s really scary. That’s really risky. Um, but when I changed my circle because I was here and the where I wanted to be was here, I found the people who were already there started talking to them. Well, nothing’s scary because they’re, they’ve already done it. So, um, look for advice in the right places when you’re starting something new.

 Terri: Yeah,

Gil : Yeah. And it’s not like it necessarily is, is graduating between different circles. You could still go to those folks for different advice and

 Terri: Yes. Yes.

 Terri: Have a bunch of circles. Like what a great life. Have a bunch of circles.

Gil : Yeah. Um, third question. What’s. One piece of tactical advice that you would give to someone that’s either trying to get started in direct bookings or trying to amplify it.

 Terri: Okay. Um, so analyze your. Ideal guest avatar. I’m gonna say, and maybe, I don’t know if this is okay, but I can send you my SDR r questionnaire. No pressure. I will give that to you and it’s going to help you kind of identify what you’re comfortable with, uh, what you feel safe with, who you wanna be hosting. Um, that’s. Start there. Start there. Understand who you’re targeting and how that meets up with you and, and your expectations and your sort of limits and risk profile. And then work on the branding. ’cause otherwise you’re gonna spend a whole bunch of time on Canva making things that are really cool, but um, aren’t gonna do anything for you.

Gil : Yeah. And I, I was speaking to someone else the other day about really thinking about your ideal guest avatar and how does ai, and we talked a little bit about kind of like ai kind of behind the scenes kind of Mm-hmm. some of these things. And one of the things that we realized is that.

Gil : I think the folks that are using AI really well are the ones giving it lots of inputs on where you want things to be, the goals. Um, you’re giving it a lot more context about how you wanna service the market, the things that really resonates with you first, and then allowing the. AI agent to really figure out like, how do we wanna then address it?

Gil : Uh, whereas I think a lot of folks, they get tripped up and they go on chat, JPT, and they’re like, oh, I have a property in X, Y, or Z. And a, it, they give it like two or three points of context and they’re like, help me come up with the marketing language for our webpage. Help me come up with our email campaign.

Gil : And I, we find that. Oftentimes when you give it such little context there and you’re not having that back and forth with the LLM, whether they’re not using chat GPT or Claude, whatever it may be, you end up getting very, very generic content there. And it sounds like you’ve, you’ve ended up kind of one tailoring the the GPT on your side, but also you’re asking very pointed questions to really kinda refine how you wanna position that property.

 Terri: Yeah, yeah. And I mean we, when we’re having these conversations, luckily we’ve kind of refined it now, but it’s irritating as heck. It is so irritating because it’s gonna spit out something, it’s gonna be wrong. You’re gonna have to go back in the back and you’re gonna have to, you know, you’re like, I don’t want this information. Um, so spend a lot of time. On the front end, um, and it’s going to, uh, yield better results. And another point just on this ai uh, business is I have found it tends to agree with me. I tend to be in a little vacuum. And so like I’ll say some things that are preposterous and like Terri-Leigh, that’s a phenomenal idea. And then I say. Can you re, can you rerun this from a more critical point of view? And it’s like, Terri-Leigh, what a terrible idea you haven’t considered. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and I didn’t realize that. I thought it was gonna pull completely factual information, and

 Terri: that’s not what it does. It starts to learn your language and it starts to agree with you.

 Terri: Um, so that, that’s my one. Like, just, just check yourself.

Gil : Yeah. Just check yourself every now and then.

Gil : Most LLMs or ais, they are there to help you with a goal. So if your goal is to go down this one path and you give it a It is gonna get you going to, it’s gonna agree with that goal and it’s gonna try to get you there. And that’s, that’s his main purpose there. It’s not there to help check you. And I think like there are other lms, not many people use or Yeah. Yep. 

Gil : is a, is a bit more controversial.

Gil : It’ll push back a bit more.

 Terri: It does.

Gil : it’s a bit more raw in, in some ways. Um, but if you’re using chat GBT, if you’re using Claude Perplexity, all of those have a tendency to really try to be a best friend

 Terri: they do.

 Terri: Yes. and, and even no one after shot at her all the time. I’m like, please, could you be less wordy? Like, we don’t need poetry language here, I just want facts.

Gil : Yeah.

 Terri: But it’s, um, and it is a great tool. So yes, I would say analyze your ideal guest avatar and not in a surface way. Dive, dive deep.

Gil : Nice. I’m gonna ask a new question, uh, and we’ll see how, how, how long I continue to ask this question, but what’s a project that you’ve always had on your mind that you’ve wanted to do a dream and that one person that can help you unlock that? What would that, what would that be? And what, who are you looking for?

 Terri: Okay. Um, this one ties up perfectly to direct booking, so we are. Have been for a bit now, moving not away from SCR Single family. We’ll, you know, we stand for that, but, um, small boutique hotels. I, I know that that’s kind of a little buzzword here, but for so many reasons, I think it’s a really good opportunity. Um, and I think having your own direct booking is, is like the only way with, with those. So I

 Terri: think it’s a phenomenal tie in here. Um, but we want to design more. We’ve had the great. Uh, joy of designing a 14 unit in St. Beach, um, St. Pete Beach, Florida. Um, we did an incredible little, uh, retreat in, um, up in Wisconsin on, it’s a lake that starts with the o um,

 Terri: and we love this.

 Terri: No, no, it’s, it’s up in, um, it’s up in Michigan. I I can’t remember what it is, but

 Terri: it’s a nine. It was a nine unit, um, retreat on the sand, literally. And we got to, we got to do the branding for that. I, I don’t know if I can share about it, but

 Terri: otherwise I would, but we, you know, we got to do a common space. Uh, we took a garage and turned it into like this game hall with cute vending machines and custom signage everywhere and like a resort map.

 Terri: And each little cottage has its own identity and we’re, we’re really, really enjoying those. Um, and on the client side. There’s an economy of scale there. So our design services are a lot more affordable when

 Terri: we can, you know, yes. When we can do that and, and, you know, not every room has to be the same, but we’re choosing maybe the same beds, the same nightstands, the same dressers, um, the same light fixtures, but then each room has art in a color scheme for the bedding and you know, it’s own cute little identity. We’re really looking to design more of those. So if anyone’s

 Terri: looking to buy them and they’re looking for a designer, like I would love, uh, to talk to you and let us put together a proposal because those are really, really fun. Um, and we might be able to show you, uh, a, a direction for your property that you might not even, um, have thought of.

 Terri: And that is complimentary.

Gil : just a phenomenal story of kind of like what you do and, and kind of how you think about things. Um, so thank you Terri-Leigh, for sharing just really everything that you’ve, you’ve, you’ve thought through how you run your design team, the struggles along the way, how you grew from operating yourself to managing a team and kind of the, the forcing functions in between to kind of systemize, systematize yourself.

Gil : So I really appreciate you sharing that with us.

Gil : All right. Thank you. See you later. Bye.