Building Guest Relationships as the Key to Achieving 50% Direct Bookings with Rodman Schley

Summary and Highlights

In our recent episode of Direct Booking Simplified, Rodman shared invaluable insights into his journey, strategies, and mindset for mastering direct bookings. Here are the key takeaways:

1. Purpose Over Profit

Rodman emphasized the importance of aligning with your purpose. “Make sure you love what you do,” he said. By combining his passions for travel and investing, Rodman found success in the short-term rental space. His advice? Be an outlier. Don’t settle for mediocrity—strive to be exceptional.

2. Why Direct Bookings Matter

With a 50% direct booking rate, Rodman’s properties stand out for their exceptional guest experiences. He highlighted how direct bookings not only reduce fees but also reflect the strength of your operations. According to Rodman, each guest’s stay is a testament to your management, systems, and property’s appeal.

Quote: “Think of that guest in your property right now as your most valuable opportunity to grow your direct booking rate.”

3. Building Relationships for Repeat Bookings

Rodman’s approach to guest relationships is unparalleled. With an attentive onsite manager and a concierge service, his team ensures every guest feels like family. From arranging surf lessons to hosting community-style retreats, Rodman’s properties deliver more than a stay—they create lasting memories.

4. Effective Email Marketing

Rodman’s email marketing strategy is simple but powerful. Monthly newsletters keep guests engaged with updates and offers, while post-stay thank-you emails nurture relationships. By focusing on value and maintaining consistent communication, his properties remain top of mind for past guests.

Pro Tip: Include updates about the community and special offers in your emails to encourage repeat bookings without overwhelming your audience.

5. Conservative Planning, Exceptional Execution

Rodman stressed the importance of realistic financial planning. By underestimating revenues and overestimating expenses, he mitigates risk and ensures his properties consistently perform. This conservative approach allows him to focus on outperforming his projections.

Transcription

Rodman: I was led with profit and purpose was always second. And those don’t work out. Make sure you love what you do. If you’re coming to the short term vacation space, make sure you love it. For me, I love to invest and I love to travel. That was a perfect thing for me. So I, that’s why I love the short term vacation rental space.

But the other thing I tell people is, you know, there’s so many people, if you think about life as being this big bell curve, right? So many people are in this easy space right in the middle of the bell curve. And I always say, you know, if you’re going to do something, be exceptional at it, be an outlier in it.

So if you’re aligned with your purpose and you put in the work, be an outlier, be, be exceptional, be an expert at what you do.

Gilbert: Hey folks, welcome back to direct booking. Simplify. We break down the strategies and tactics to win and direct bookings on today’s show. I have Robin Schley. Robin, did I say that correctly?

Rodman: You said it, right.

Gilbert: Awesome. Well, it’s great to have you on the show.

Gilbert: Um, it’s great to, I met you a couple of weeks back and I’m, I’m thrilled to have you on the show and kind of talk about how you’ve grown in real estate, what you’re doing now, um, and share with us, uh, some tips on how to really amp up that direct bookings basically, because when I learned what your direct booking rate is, I definitely wanted you to, to share that with the group here.

Gilbert: Awesome.

Rodman: Yeah. Yeah. I’m excited to be here. Excited to talk. We had a great conversation when you were on my podcast and, uh, you know, it’s always just nice to be able to share this knowledge and this, this information that you collect with people and pass it on down to those folks who maybe want to figure out how to be an outlier in the space, how to be great, how to be an expert.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. And I always find that like through the podcast, like the best way to do that is really to get a mixture or like almost like a melting pot of different perspectives because I find that like, there’s not one, you know, that’s like going into real estate investing, starting your own business, doing anything.

Gilbert: There’s not run one way to do it. Right. Um, and it’s often. Yeah. Many, many different ways of doing it. Right. And it may have different outcomes. They may have different timelines, but people approach it different ways. But the best thing to really do is really educate on what people are doing and finding out what, what works for you.

Rodman: Yeah. How do you optimize, how do you get better at what you’re doing and how do you learn from others and optimize what they’re doing? And, you know, it’s a really small community of people who are doing what we’re doing. And so when we get a chance to lift other people up, teach, educate, learn from them, you gotta, you gotta jump on that.

Gilbert: Yeah, absolutely. Well, before we get too far into it, do you mind giving a quick introduction on who you are, what you’re doing now, kind of how you got here?

Rodman: Yeah, of course. No, of course. Like you said, I’m Robin Schley. I, uh, I’m a real estate investor in short term vacation rentals, but I haven’t always been in short term vacation rentals. I started my career path back when I was in college, 18 years old, started buying and flipping properties at that time to pay my way through college.

Rodman: And the thing about that is you’d buy a property, you’d flip it, and you have to go on to the next one. So it wasn’t anything passive. You were always looking for that next deal, almost looking for that next job so that you can facilitate some returns. And then for me back then it was paying tuition. But, uh, you know, I got to the point in life where.

Rodman: I also was doing a lot of valuation. So I’m an appraiser by background. I’ve done over 20 billion in valuations over the years, dissecting deals, looking at numbers, looking at pro formas, looking at returns, looking at cap rates, looking at so many different areas in the real estate. I mean, real estate’s huge.

Rodman: There’s so many different ways you can go, whether you’re a broker, whether you’re an appraiser, whether you’re an investor, whether it’s office, whether it’s multifamily. But I really started to fall in love with the short term vacation rentals. And one of the main reasons is a little bit selfish because I love to travel.

Rodman: You know, I love to invest, but I love to travel. And so you start to put those two things together. And then after doing a really deep dive, there were a lot of people who were very, very good at it. But there were a lot of people who maybe shouldn’t have been doing short term vacation rentals. They got in at the wrong time.

Rodman: They got when the market was, I mean, there was a time during COVID when people were taking wheelbarrows of money to the bank and they really weren’t having to deal with the fundamentals because so many people were stuck at home and they were traveling, they were taking their kids, uh, they were taking themselves who didn’t have to go to that job or have to go to that school and they could go anywhere.

Rodman: But the people who are really going to be excelling in what we’re doing right now in the short term vacation rental market are those people who take it to the top level, who know how to optimize what they’re doing, who understand the fundamentals, who buy based on fundamentals and not just that emotion.

Gilbert: So you, you start off in flip and flip. How long have you been doing the short term rental? You call it passive side now.

Rodman: Yeah. The passive side. So we started, you know, I, I actually bought my first vacation rental back in 2001. I bought a cabin up in Keystone, Colorado. Uh, at that time it was beautiful three bedroom with a loft. I think I bought it for like, 400, 000. I think that same property is worth about 1. 2 million right now.

Rodman: Um, but, uh, that was the first step into it. And of course, you know, we rented it when we didn’t use it. And then we went up when we wanted to go up cause I’m in Denver, Colorado. So it was really about an hour, hour and a half drive up into Keystone, Colorado. And it made a lot of sense to be able to get to that property.

Rodman: But that was kind of my first time dipping my toe into something like the vacation rental market. And I just, I fell in love with it.

Gilbert: Yeah. And you’re not in Colorado anymore. At least that’s not where your portfolio is now. Where, where are you investing now?

Rodman: Yeah, right now we’re investing the majority of our portfolio down in Costa Rica. Uh, again, a little bit selfishly, I love Costa Rica, but also the fundamentals were really good. Um, when we started having those interest rates hikes here in the United States, it took some of the fundamentals and it kind of flipped them a little bit where you could sit there, you could leverage something out at a low interest rate.

Rodman: You could really maximize those returns and get the really good ROIs. But as interest rates went up, of course, the R. I. R. O. I. start to go down, right? When you’re leveraging. So what we did is we started looking at cash deals down in Costa Rica. Hard to get financing down there. But with those cash deals, I could go down there and find stuff at a 15 percent cap rate.

Rodman: So unleveraged. So I was already getting over my hurdles, the barriers that I wanted to hit. On cash and not even have to worry about the leveraging of the properties.

Gilbert: Wow. Wow. And talk to me a little bit about kind of what the, the type of portfolio you’re looking at in, in, in Costa Rica, are they small little condos? Are they single family?

Rodman: Yeah. My, the one, well, we’ve got several, but I’d say my favorite one down there, the one that’s, uh, working out the best is it’s a cluster of property. So it’s, uh, it’s multiple freestanding cottages. They’re pretty good sized cottages on a single parcel, uh, with like a common pool and it’s got a, a two story yoga platform.

Rodman: It’s got a three bedroom, a couple of two bedrooms, some one bedrooms in there. Uh, but people are absolutely in love with this property. It’s one of those properties where I feel so fortunate that it came on the market. And again, when we bought that one, it 15 cap, not on projections, but on the actual historical data that we got.

Rodman: So it was a great buy a beautiful property. Plus it had a rabid, uh, type of person who was already coming in and running the property. So people that want to keep coming back over and over again.

Gilbert: Yeah. Um, you’re, you’re using terms that we typically hear more in the. Long term rental side, you talk about cap rates rather than cash on cash. Um, you talk about actually more on the commercial terms and more than anything else. Um, how do you think, and maybe you have a solution to this, but like, as you think about force appreciation, like how do you think you as an operator do, and how do you think about what that cap rate might look like as you may even sell off some of these properties?

Rodman: Yeah. I mean, when you’re talking about, you’re going to gain several places, of course, on any investments, you’re going to have your, of course, your rental income, your NOI at the end of the day to, to, to get a return on your investment on whatever you’ve got into it. Uh, of course you’re going to get your tax benefits that are going to help you along the way that you can factor in.

Rodman: I don’t factor those in, those are just kind of gravy. Those are extra to me. Uh, and then like you said, you got that appreciation rate. So when you talk about the appreciation rate, um, historically, I like to plug in when I’m doing my assumptions. When I’m looking at a property, I’ll plug in no more than a 3 percent appreciation rate.

Rodman: I’m I’ll look at the marketplace. Yeah, this is my, this is, again, I know I’m that appraiser guy who, who loves numbers. And I love to look at the returns, but when I’m looking at what I think is going to come into the property, as far as income, I’m going to underestimate that when it comes to my occupancy, I’m going to underestimate that.

Rodman: And then my expenses, I always overestimate those because I like to get to a really conservative net operating income before I’ve made a purchase. That way I’m, Buffering a lot of my risk when I’m going in and make my deals. Right. So for me, uh, it’s important to, to, to look at these things very conservatively when I’m going in, uh, make purchasing decisions, not based on any emotion.

Rodman: And I think you see that a lot. You went, I know, you know, you, you mentioned that I’m talking a lot about like what I might be talking about in commercial real estate or maybe an apartment building or maybe an office building, but understanding those fundamentals as an investor is something I think a lot of short term vacation rental.

Rodman: Owners miss out on. I think if they took those same fundamentals and plugged it in to what they’re doing, they would have a lot less risk in any of the deals that they were doing and have a lot more negotiating power.

Gilbert: Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely right. And that’s like, when I think back on like how I’ve invested, I came from the long term rental side of things. And so you’re thinking about, um, those returns. Earns much more. And when we, I remember when I first, when I was purchasing our second property, the numbers just didn’t pencil out.

Gilbert: I was like, there’s no investor that would ever buy this. And I just let us sit on the market for months and end up calling my realtor one day. I was like. If the only way that this makes sense and for me to get the returns, I need, I need to get at this price. And it was very non emotional, very non emotional and allowed me to have a lot of confidence going into it.

Gilbert: And like, looking back, like I’m glad that I did my homework and punch the numbers in there. Otherwise I could have gone on FOMO and wanted to buy that property. And it, I checked all the other boxes. Um, but when you know what your, what your performance standards are and know how to run the numbers, it just makes you, you know, A much better operator and, and you take a lot less risk.

Rodman: Yeah. And that was one of the biggest problems with that COVID period, because things were going so well and so swimmingly that. That people were making these emotional buying decisions versus very economically driven decisions. And that’s where you start to get yourself in trouble. And a lot of those people that are sitting there now going, I got this property on negative cash flowing.

Rodman: Do I liquidate? So you got a choice. You either liquidate or you get really good. You figure out what you need to do to make it better. So that you have something that’s actually making money or at least breaking even for you so you can keep on to it.

Gilbert: Yeah. Uh, on your Costa Rica properties, have you done any forced appreciation yourself? Any, um, any kind of upgrades that you’ve done or maybe even operationally run it more efficiently to force appreciation,

Rodman: Yeah. I mean, we’ve done a little bit, so, you know, if you’re talking about just, uh, changes to get the appreciation versus just general market appreciation, you know, the market that we went into is, it was a great market. They’ve been appreciating significantly still is. So I feel very fortunate to be where we’re at.

Rodman: Uh, but yeah, we did some, some upgrades. I mean, you know, Costa Rica, when you’re talking about the weather down there, It is hot and it’s humid, beautiful, stunning, lush jungles, lots of rain, those kinds of things, you know? And, uh, we’re, we’re lucky to be in a beach town. So we get a little bit of the cooling factor off of the ocean, but at the end of the day, not all the units had like many splits in them.

Rodman: They didn’t have, uh, the AC running through them. So one of the first things we did is like every unit needs to have AC. And that’s maybe a little bit selfish because when I go down there, I want to make sure that I get a place because it gets hot 90 degrees, you know, you can take a dip in the pool, but it’s nice to get in that air conditioning room too.

Rodman: And so many people that were repeat customers were so thankful to have those AC units in there. And then we’re able to up the race to reflect it.

Gilbert: Yeah, do you, do you feel like that really helped you stand apart once someone knows that that’s actually the quality difference between you and your fellow competitors?

Rodman: I think it helps. I think a lot of the competitors have. The AC units and such in there, but the big difference, I mean, for us, one of the big things that staffing, you know, we’ve got an incredible staff. People come back to us because we’re in a beautiful location. We’re set back perfect place to walk to the beach or walk downtown.

Rodman: But my staff is so good too. Right. My staff is incredible. So the air conditioning units helped that person who might’ve come for the first time and didn’t have air conditioning and then decided not to come back versus the person now who comes with the air conditioning that first time and goes, I got to go back.

Gilbert: I see. I see. What, uh, what was one of your biggest lesson learns as you went through your entire, uh, investing journey? Yeah.

Rodman: Oh, don’t, don’t fall in love with deals. Don’t fall in love with properties. I mean, you, you gotta have that power to be very analytical and you got to have that power to walk away from a deal. If it’s not penciling out or if it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t feel right. There’s plenty of deals that I’ve, I really, really liked and that I really, really wanted, but was smart enough to walk away.

Rodman: And every single time I did, I’m so thankful that I had that power to walk away from a deal. Uh, so many people don’t have that. They go to that place they love or that community they love. And they go, I want to have a vacation property here, but they have no idea on the numbers. They fall in love, they buy, and then they’re wondering what they’ll just say, well, I’ll just get some renters in here to offset my cat or offset my expenses.

Rodman: But they don’t know what their expenses are. They don’t understand. I might have that maintenance issue or I might, you know, and if I don’t have the reserve for that maintenance issue, I’m going to have to come out of pocket or, uh, I’m not going to have any renters in the fall because maybe I’m in a market where fall is just not a good place to go there, those kinds of things.

Rodman: And they get into those, Positions where they’re, they’re, they’re in trouble and they’re in trouble just because they’ve, they’ve bought based on emotion, heart versus analytics. You gotta be able to look at analytics and be able to walk away from a deal that just doesn’t work for you. Like you did on that one that didn’t pencil out.

Rodman: And then what it did is it came back and then it did pencil out.

Gilbert: yeah, yeah. It doesn’t always, it doesn’t always work out. I think, but if you definitely know where your standards are, it just, it just helps, it helps a whole lot. I think you made a small point just now about like cashflow and low seasons there. I think one of the things that I’ve seen is for some of those seasonal markets, there.

Gilbert: I think some folks that are kind of getting into this as a first property into a brand new market that isn’t used to seasonality. They don’t really take in consideration. What do you do in those low months? Um, for instance, when we started in, in Branson, we started, we launched in December. Luckily we got a few Christmas and New Year’s bookings, but in Branson, it’s almost 30 percent occupancy in the months of Jan Feb.

Gilbert: Had we had not anticipated that and actually, um, took a bigger loan out in the very beginning, we would have been stuck at really paying mortgages for two months where we’re not going to be getting revenue revenues. Um, so I think like that’s, that’s an important point for folks that like are thinking about underwriting a deal.

Gilbert: It’s good to look at the entire annual revenues to your projections and so on, but also understand what your seasonalities are and whether or not you have the cash flow to float that, especially in that first year, because that first year you’re not, you should not be taking money from that property.

Gilbert: You should be really saving up those reserves. Should something ever happen?

Rodman: Yeah. And, and when you’re doing that, you can look at a long term occupancy rate. I mean, on, on the inverse side of that, it’s like, we talk a lot about vacancy rates, but over here we like the occupancy rate. So like you can look at the whole year, but make sure that you’re not just looking at your high season and plugging in a high season rate.

Rodman: Say what’s going to be my average over the, over the 12 month period that I can plug into my proforma. And a lot of people, again, I love optimism. I’m an optimistic guy in, in, in life. I love to get up. Um, you know, I love to encourage people and be happy and do great things, but at the same time, be a realist.

Rodman: And what you’re doing when it comes to your numbers, um, because you’ll be very unhappy, very quickly. The second that you underperform because you overestimated, uh, a overestimate your NOI at the end of the day, basically.

Gilbert: Yeah. And I think that I’ve seen some folks, I’ve seen a lot of performance through, through my investing journey. Um, I’ve now used my own specialty that I’ve kind of mixed a match from all the learnings I’ve done, but I’ve seen some folks get really good at it. Really, month by month, understanding what the occupancy and the ADRs are.

Gilbert: And they’re using that to drive it. So they’re not looking at an average per the entire year, but they’re looking at month by month and then averaging that out rather than kind of like, Oh, I’m going to take the split difference between the high and the low.

Rodman: Yeah. And that’s the exact way you should do it. I mean, that’s the smart way. Look at your monthly and take an average over the, over the 12 month period. Right. Instead of, like you said, don’t split the high and the low because. Who knows? Maybe you’ve got, you know, four months that are really gonna have an impact either positively or negatively on that rate.

Rodman: And if you want to really dial it in the closer that you can get to it, um, specifically month by month, the better off you’re gonna be.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The, the weighted average is a much more reliable way to do it.

Rodman: Yeah. Plus you also know Gil what, uh, you’re going to have to try to outperform. Like I love going into markets saying, okay, this is where the market is performing. Maybe this is where this property is historically performed, but what can I do to outperform that? I will put into my pro forma, a very conservative estimate.

Rodman: Then after I’ve got the property go, okay, now it’s time to outperform those numbers.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I want to switch gears just a little bit because we, uh, a big chunk of the show is really around direct bookings. And I know you have a lot of successes in direct bookings. Um, do you mind just sharing first off, like. Why is direct bookings first, like important to you in the first place?

Gilbert: Like, why, why do I invest into it?

Rodman: well, for several reasons, I mean, number one, a direct booking, uh, it can happen a lot of different ways of direct booking, but like a lot of our direct booking comes from repeat business. Right. And for us, that just says we’re doing something right. As a property group, we’re treating the people, right?

Rodman: We’ve got a property. This magical, my staff is good. My management’s good. My systems are good. Um, it’s a testament direct bookings are a testament to how you’re, how you are as an operator. Basically, and how the property performs for those folks. And so for us, direct bookings has always been one of those things that if we can get them, we’ll take that first.

Rodman: Every day, you know that it’s one of those things where you’re going to get the most bang for your buck Uh, you’re going to have the the least amount of fees your tenants are going to have the least amount of fees It just is so much better But I don’t want to necessarily uh, you know jump on the the airbnbs and the verbos and say That is a garbage.

Rodman: I mean, we, those are great too, because that supplements and that helps, but the more that we can get into the direct booking column, and the less that we can get in the other column, the better off we’re going to be.

Gilbert: Yeah, it’s, it’s almost like a scale that you end up trying to tip over time because you, you, you probably feel it’s the same, but. Airbnb, VRBO, booking. com, all the OTAs is a really good lead source of really getting someone to trust and book a stay with you. Um, they, I think of them as the transaction to help bring them in as a, as a customer.

Gilbert: And from there, it’s our responsibility to make sure that you have a great stay and keep on booking with us again.

Rodman: Yeah, not only have a great stay, but it’s also a responsibility then at the same time to make sure we capture that email. And then how do we facilitate that next day? And how do we keep in touch with somebody? I mean, we do monthly emails to, to the people who come to our property. And it’s so funny. It’s kind of like people are almost like family at that property.

Rodman: It’s, it’s, you’ll send out an email. And even when we took over the property, I had people who had stayed there in the past, reach out to me directly. And just say, great. It’s awesome to meet the new owners. Can’t wait to come back out there this year. Uh, hopefully you’ll be on site. I’ll have a chance to say hello.

Rodman: Um, but if you can really facilitate a strong list of people who have stayed at your property and then get them to come back, you take care of them that one time and they’ll come back and they’ll come back over and over again, if they have the right experience.

Gilbert: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about, I think first off, like, do you do anything special to make sure they feel like family? Like, like you said, uh, or is that just more so the culture of the folks that are staying with you?

Rodman: Well, it’s a little bit of both down there. So, you know, I’ve got, I’m fortunate enough when we’ve got a cluster of six, like our cluster of six down there in Costa Rica. So we’ve got an onsite property manager and her name’s Johanna incredible human and being somebody who is so attentive to everybody’s needs.

Rodman: Uh, I see her communicating with people who are on site all the time, uh, with questions, or maybe they want to go on a tour, or maybe they want to go surf lessons, those kinds of things. And she’s so responsive to them. And, you know, people leave there. If you read the reviews that people leave for us, it is just so much like, I cannot believe how well I was treated by the staff.

Rodman: I can’t believe how much people paid attention to my needs while I was there, or I needed this and I had it like that. Or I want to, it’s just one of those things where, you If you go above and beyond for the people staying there, it’s not just about your property. It’s about the experience. So you can have a beautiful property, but if they have a bad experience, they’re probably not going to come back in.

Rodman: Right? So for me, it’s one of those things where we’ve got people in place that do an exceptional job at making people feel like they’re part of that family. Even when I was out there, I w I just got back from Costa Rica on Tuesday. I went down for about five days. I did a little bit of work, a little bit of play.

Rodman: Okay. Um, but there were people that were staying there, uh, that went down and took surf lessons with me. I was surfing and they took some lessons, uh, at my favorite little surf school there, or, uh, there was another couple that does a swim every day and they wanted me to come out and do a swim with them.

Rodman: It’s, it’s one of those things that. You will get so much more, uh, out of return business and people who are going to be invested in your property, like it’s family. If you invest in them yourself too.

Gilbert: Yeah, yeah. It sounds like the, uh, the property themselves, you think of it very much like a product or even a service there where you’re constantly thinking about how to elevate the guest experience and really make sure that they’re walking away, not just from a five star rating standpoint, But really feeling like they had a really good stay and that this is a place that they want to come back year after year.

Rodman: Yeah. And we, we integrated a concierge service down there. So we literally have everything set up. So if somebody is going to come to our property and if they need, Uh, shuttle services, we can set it up. If they want to take surf lessons, we can set it up. If you want to go, uh, on a kayak tour, or if you want to go on a whale, uh, you know, search for whales, which we, it’s a lot of fun, actually, I love doing that.

Rodman: But people can literally just call my manager and she’s got them set up. And so we, we go above and beyond for those folks. So they know when I come out, I’m not going to have to do really any brain damage. I can just kind of say, I’d love to do these things. And then it gets done for them.

Gilbert: Interesting. How

Rodman: And it adds to the cashflow, by the way, Gil, I mean, you know, We do, we do get, you know, we get referral fees from the services that we book for people.

Gilbert: Interesting. Um, I’m wondering how do you scale and build the system where you have that high level of consistency there? How do you set up those? What do you use to kind of behind the scenes to make sure that they are, you are delivering on that concierge service on really that, that experience there.

Gilbert: What do you do anything special? Like do you think about anything specifically when you hire or your SLPs? How do you, how do you think about that?

Rodman: uh, it’s tough because it’s just you and you, like, you know, you’re sitting in a different state from your properties. I think you had yours in just in Tennessee and you’ve got some in Missouri, but you don’t live in either of those places.

Rodman: So, you know, you’ve got to do things from a distance. So for us, it was important to buy in clusters. So we had everything in a place where we could scale, where I could have the same maintenance person. I could have the same cleaning people. I could have the same property manager so that when people are doing things, It’s a one stop shop for them and it makes it really, really easy.

Rodman: Uh, when somebody needs something and my, my manager comes in every day, she comes into the site. So she’s on site, uh, for a while and people see her and, you know, again, kind of like families, like they might have a cocktail by the pool together, or they might, you know, whatever it might be. Uh, but I think the more properties you have in a single cluster or an area makes it easier to do those concierge type services versus when you get really spread out or if you’re a long way from the property, uh, that makes it a little bit more difficult, but you could automate systems to do it too.

Rodman: If you were in a situation where you had a property, say like in your Branson property, I don’t know all the things to do in Branson. I know they’ve got a lot of country music and a lot of, you know, a lot of families go and do those things, but to be able to automate something where when somebody books, it’s Something could get sent out where they could just pick the things they want to be doing, and they could direct book through an automated system.

Rodman: Not quite as good as that inner action that you get one on one when you’ve got a manager doing it. But people want simplicity and they want to be able to just feel taken care of. And so anything that you can do, whether it’s through a guidebook or automating some things so people could have an automated kind of experience.

Rodman: I think it adds to that value.

Gilbert: Yeah, and I think more recently, there has been a lot of service providers or technology partners that are Really trying to make this more, I would say, commercialized, uh, for folks. Um, there’s mount, there’s the host co, uh, where you can buy upsells within, within the stay. Like you’re able to send someone a link before they check in to see if they want to check in early or, or check out late or be able to book massage services.

Gilbert: Um, so that’s, They are making things, those things available, but I agree with you when you do have a cluster of folks and specifically a big enough cluster where you’re hiring your own staff. I think that’s when you start to reach that, that, that next level of one efficiency, but to also like quality control.

Rodman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you can do it, you know, on a, on smaller properties, you can set it up. It just doesn’t scale as well. I mean, it’s in terms of being able to get that one on one there’s something about talking to somebody. And having that beautiful voice on the end of the phone saying, yeah, what do you need?

Rodman: I got you here. You got to go down to Pato’s surf school. Pato is incredible. Uh, he and his wife Kate run it and we can get you some surf lessons. You know, it’s 60 bucks for the day. You get the board free for the week and people are going, wow. You know, that’s, that’s just a great thing. Um, the other thing about having that kind of services, you can be a little bit more selective in who you’re using as providers, like, you We could use a large like tour operator and offer tours and get 10 to 15 percent back to us by going through these big, big tour operators who have multiple things.

Rodman: You know, they have everyone lined up. It’s like, I can’t, uh, it’s like Vidor. I can’t remember the exact name of it, but, um, and I probably butchered that name, but that’s okay. But if. You get those community relationships too. So like down in Costa Rica, it’s not just about having a big single operator. We have relationships with all these tour operators, the people who have the businesses themselves.

Rodman: So it’s like Pato surf school. I know Pato, right. And Pato is an incredible human being. I love his wife, you know, and I know that they just had a baby and I’ll, I’ll go talk to them and see them. And then when people come to town, I know they’re going to be really good with Pato. So I can say, Hey, if you want surf lessons, you got to go use Pato and then they’ll go down and go to Pato and, you know, they’ll say, Hey, Rodman, send us down here.

Rodman: And it’s this, this relationship that you have with your tenant, the local business, and you that’s really impactful. And when people leave there, they feel like they’re a part of that community because they’re a part of that community business. And that person that was a part of that community and they come back, I have people that come back.

Rodman: And want the same things. It’s like, I got to go back to see Pato or I got to go back and, uh, go back on that whale tour again, because it was so incredible. And I, they know people’s names and you get to a point like that, that’s just a whole different level of service.

Gilbert: Yeah, I hear you on that. Um, you mentioned a little while ago that you collect folks emails, um, and you market to them. What are, I think, first off, like, how are you collecting those emails? Um, and then second, what are the types of messages that you’re sending out to your guests? Um, and at what frequency to really have them want to go back with you.

Rodman: Yeah. You know, you don’t want to, you don’t want to overdo it when you’re sending out messages. There’s there, there’s too many and there’s just enough, you know, once a month, it’s a pretty good frequency. And you know, what we’ll usually do is it’s more updates. Uh, on what’s happening in the community. And then we might have an offer at the end, but we’re set up also for retreats.

Rodman: So the way our property is set up, people can come in and do nice, beautiful retreats. We can accommodate up 20, like 25 people. We got an incredible yoga platform. So when people come and fall in love with the property, we’ll usually hit them back and say, Hey, would you like to host a retreat down here too?

Rodman: We’ve got a hosting program, and if you have a hosting program, a lot of people like, yeah, because the hosting program that we have set up is people, if they want to have a retreat at our property, they’ll get their space on the property for free. And then the people who are a part of the retreat, you know, we’ll pay for their rooms.

Rodman: But for me, uh, I get that email and it says, Oh man, I can go. I could host a family reunion. I could host 10 friends down there. I can, you know, he got 10 bedrooms. I could do a boy’s trip down there. I’m going to get my spot for free. If I go down there, I just had to get nine people to go down with me. What does that do?

Rodman: That makes them go. I’m going to go and market their spaces. To bring people down there for a week and it increases our occupancy. They’ll get their room for free. Um, and then we also have some other things that we throw in our hosting program. But we do that kind of stuff through our email. So they get people who have been to the property.

Rodman: They get the email. They’re already in love with the property. They’re dying to come back. And now they figure out I can go for free. If I do a retreat down there,

Gilbert: That’s interesting. That’s interesting. And do you? So when I think about emails, I break it up to two different parts. We have one, which is kind of a drip nurture email that, uh, You start to send them after they check out. Um, and then you also have kind of like the monthly newsletter types. So it sounds definitely, it sounds like you’re doing the monthly newsletter types.

Gilbert: Uh, are you also doing that, um, sequence email after they check out?

Rodman: we do some thank yous and that, that after they’ve checked out of the property, right. Um, cause we do want to nurture that way too. We don’t probably go more than maybe two deep in our sequence. So I don’t know how far down you sequence in. But we’ll, we’ll sequence a couple of times after they’ve checked out and then drop them into the monthly monthly email.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody has a little bit of a different tactic there, which I, which I actually really love and there’s no right one way to do it. Um, but what I’ve seen is like, if you really lean on providing value. in those emails and then you give them the chance to book with you and remind them that they can book with you.

Gilbert: That’s usually the sweet spot. Uh, you’re trying to really stay top of mind more than anything else and not be a new nuisance because what you don’t want to do is not email them for three months and then start emailing them again where they’re just seeing you out of the blue for the first time. That’s when things start to hurt.

Rodman: Yeah, no, you you gotta nurture your your email list I mean the the worst thing you can do is have a really robust email list and then Not be consistent or just be consistently asking, you know, it’s like you want to give way more than you’re asking. And again, like you said, it’s that top of mind. You always want them to be thinking, Oh man, I’d love to get back down there again.

Gilbert: Yeah. Um, are there any other tactics that you do, um, to help drive that impressive direct booking rate?

Rodman: Yeah. I mean, we’ve been blessed. So I know we, we mentioned, I don’t know if we mentioned it here. We talked about it before, but we’ve got about a 50 percent direct booking rate. And when we came and bought that property, one of the reasons we bought that property is it had a really solid, robust repeat customer.

Rodman: Right. And so we are very, very fortunate to get that right out of the gates. And again, for us, it was starting to take what they had been doing and then continue doing those same things, uh, to, to get those repeat customers in. We don’t do a lot of, you know, we don’t do any direct marketing. We do do marketing for our retreat programs, uh, that help get us direct bookings.

Rodman: Those are a very valuable thing to us. Again, we do give away a free room out of the space. But the, the marketing dollars that we spend on that are very low and then we don’t have any of those costs and fees. So it, it makes total sense to be able to do it. Um, you know, we also do, and it kind of depends on what you’ve got.

Rodman: Everybody’s got different, uh, benefits or opportunities with their properties. Like, Ours is set up well for a retreat. So we capitalize on that. We reach out to yoga instructors. We reach out to meditation instructors. We reach out to, uh, people who are thinking about doing family reunions, and we’re always saying, Hey, we’ve got this beautiful space.

Rodman: We’ve got this retreat program. Uh, and it’s very affordable too. And, you know, then we book a direct call so people can get on a call with my manager down there, Johanna, who can walk them through, well, this is what your retreat would look like. If you had a yoga retreat down here. So we, we get some pretty good business out of that.

Rodman: And those are direct bookings that are, are priceless,

Gilbert: Yeah, sounds like you have a very sustainable business where you don’t necessarily have to work. worry about the OTA is taking you off or, or delisting you or bumping you from one page to another. Um, you’ve gotten to a point where you have a healthy size of your business, which is almost self perpetuating.

Rodman: you know, it’s healthy, but, you know, you talk about where you’re at in the, the algorithm. I mean, when we bought that property right out of the gates, one of the problems that we had is of course, you know, that The super host status does not transfer over to the new owners, right? Uh, with your, with your Airbnb.

Rodman: So we lost super host status until, you know, we had enough reviews and enough, uh, timeline behind us that, uh, we are able to regain super host status. And, you know, just working on all those five star reviews, but there was a dip. It didn’t go to zero because we had a very robust direct. Booking, right? But we did lose a big chunk of revenue because we didn’t have that in place, but we expected it when we went in, that we were going to have a dip because of that and that it would come back up again.

Gilbert: Yeah. It sounds like you’re, you’re at 50 now. And I bet the next time we chat, it’s probably going to be more than that.

Rodman: I hope so.

Gilbert: Awesome. Um, uh, we usually, Robin, we usually end with two questions on our show. Uh, one’s a mindset question. One’s a more action oriented question on the mindset question first. What’s the one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

Gilbert: Silence.

Rodman: going to come. But make sure you put perfect purpose over profit. I wrote a book called the outlier mindset about that.

Rodman: And about my experiences back in time where I used to start businesses with profit, I was led with profit and purpose was always second. And those don’t work out. Make sure you love what you do. If you’re coming to the short term vacation space, make sure you love it. For me, I love to invest and I love to travel.

Rodman: That was a perfect thing for me. So I, that’s why I love the short term vacation rental space. But the other thing I tell people is, you know, there’s so many people, if you think about life as being this big bell curve, right, so many people are in this easy space right in the middle of the bell curve. And I always say, you know, if you’re going to do something, be exceptional at it, be an outlier in it.

Rodman: So if you’re aligned with your purpose. And you put in the work be an outlier be be exceptional be an expert at what you do Because so many people don’t do that. They get up every day Uh, they go through the motions or they’re okay with just being average in the space Um, and it doesn’t take much to be on the fringes of that bell curve If you just put in a little bit of that effort and that time and if you’re doing what you love You’re going to do it anyway.

Rodman: And that’s why it’s so important to align with purpose. So when you’re getting into something new, just make sure that you’re in good alignment. And then if you’re in alignment, be exceptional.

Gilbert: I love that. I love that. Um, last question on the direct booking side. What’s the one advice or one tip that you want folks to walk away with? What do you want to put? What do you want them to put in practice?

Rodman: I would tell them to understand the importance of the person staying in their property at that time. I mean, so many people think, okay, I got one person, then I’m going to have the next customer and the next customer. But think of that customer that’s in there right now. Think of that person who’s staying at your property as being the most valuable thing that you have.

Rodman: To increase that direct booking rate, knowing that if you give them that experience, they’re going to come back over and over again. If you cultivate that relationship, they’re going to come back to you over and over again. That’s how you’re going to grow that rate. There’s a lot of ways to get those direct bookings.

Rodman: But never overlooked the importance of that person laying in that bed that night. And then they go home with that experience that they love and they’re excited to come back to.

Gilbert: Yeah, I, I, that’s what I love about kind of your story and your, your, your art there where you’re not running a lot of ads. You’re not spending a whole bunch on social media. You’re not doing a lot of things that may need additional effort. You’re being a phenomenal host. You have a great product and you care about your guests.

Gilbert: And that has, that alone. Has gotten you to 50%.

Rodman: And you’re right. We’ve spent negligible money advertising and marketing because we haven’t needed to. Because, again, so many people come in, there’s, I just can’t express enough how important that relationship and that experience is for that person. And that’s with any customer experience. It costs a lot of money to gain a customer, but once they’re there, that’s what you’ve got to cultivate.

Rodman: That’s what you’ve got to focus in on because they’ll come over again and again and again. And that’s in any business that you run.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Uh, Raman, before we kind of, uh, leave the show, are there any projects that you’re working on right now? Is there any thing that you want to engage with our audience?

Rodman: Yeah. You know, people can find me number one, if they want to find me on social media, I’m @gorodman. Uh, people cannot spell my last name. So we made it easy. It’s like go daddy, but it’s @gorodman. If you want to find me on social media. Uh, the other thing is I I’ve got the vacationpropertyexpertnetwork.com. Which is a place if you’re looking to enhance your professional career as a short term vacation rental owner, we focus on everything in there teaching the investment fundamentals that we talked about. I mean, I can’t even express how important that is, how to get good management in place, uh, how to make sure you’re picking the right markets, all those things.

Rodman: Uh, so important. And if it’s not me, I always tell people. Find a good place where you can get mentorship. You can get coaching. I still get coaching and I’ve got the expert network myself. I think it’s always important that we’re really learning from one another. We’re always lifting one another up to be exceptional.

Rodman: And again, kind of getting on the outside fringes of that bell curve.

Gilbert: Absolutely. I love it. Robin, it was a really good to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing your entire journey through first start starting off with flicks and flip and flips, fix and flips. And then now to what you call passive short, short term rentals. Um, a lot of us will probably argue it’s not as passive as a lot of folks may think, um, but definitely a lot more passive than, than, than flips.

Gilbert: Um, and also kind of diving deep into really your story around how you went and direct bookings. Thanks

Rodman: Yeah. I appreciate you having me on today.

Gilbert: All right. Thanks. Bye.