Building an Authentic Personal Brand That Converts Guests into Loyal Bookers with Amber Hurdle

Podcast Summary and Highlights

👤 Meet Amber Hurdle

Amber Hurdle is a globally recognized brand strategist, multi-award-winning keynote speaker, and author of The Bombshell Business Woman. She brings over two decades of experience helping Fortune 100 companies, celebrities, and entrepreneurs build brands that connect deeply and drive measurable results.

Her hospitality credentials run deep. Amber spent years at Gaylord Hotels overseeing internal communications and employee engagement—ensuring staff felt valued so they could deliver exceptional guest experiences. She later led the internal rebrand when Marriott acquired Gaylord Opryland, which remains the largest Marriott property in the world.

Today, Amber runs Brand Edge Accelerator and the Vanguard Council, working with founders and executives to build personal brands grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and authenticity. She’s been featured in Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek, and recognized as one of the top 30 brand professionals globally by Global Gurus.

Connect with Amber:

• 🌐 Website: amberhurdle.com
• 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/theamberhurdle
• 📸 Instagram: @theamberhurdle
• 📘 Facebook: facebook.com/AmberHurdleFan

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🎯 Why Personal Branding Matters for Direct Bookings

Most hosts think branding is about logos and color palettes. Amber sees it differently. A brand is the emotional connection your business creates with everyone who encounters it—guests, community members, even local government officials dealing with short-term rental regulations.

When you build a direct booking website, you’re asking strangers to trust you with thousands of dollars and their vacation memories. Unlike Airbnb, which provides trust signals, your direct booking site must earn that trust from scratch.

The hosts who succeed at direct bookings share something in common: they put themselves out there. They show their faces, share their stories, and communicate their values consistently across every touchpoint.

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🪝 The Fishing Analogy That Changes Everything

Amber explains positioning through a fishing metaphor that every host should memorize.

If you want to catch a catfish, you don’t take a boat to the ocean with squid as bait. You find a murky pond, use something like chicken liver, drop your line, and wait. Knowing your lure and your body of water is essential.

For vacation rental operators, this means understanding exactly who your ideal guest is before creating any marketing. Your brand promise answers three questions: What do you do? Who do you do it for? How do you do it uniquely?

The “who” tells you what body of water you’re fishing in. The “how” becomes your lure. Without this clarity, you’re marketing to everyone and connecting with no one—the same trap that keeps many hosts stuck on the OTA treadmill.

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📸 Why Your Face Matters More Than Your Logo

Gil shared data from CraftedStays showing that websites with host photos and personal bios convert significantly better than those hiding behind company logos or property images.

The psychology behind this is simple. Vacation rentals aren’t hotels. Guests want to feel they’re staying in a home, welcomed by a real person. Your prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that makes values-based decisions—responds to human faces. It’s why putting a personal picture on your direct booking site isn’t vanity; it’s conversion optimization.

CraftedStays now makes the host bio and photo a mandatory field during onboarding because the data proves it works. When guests see who they’re booking with, trust forms faster.

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🏆 Case Studies: Hosts Who Built Brands on Their Backs

Amber highlighted two examples of vacation rental operators who understood personal branding before it became trendy.

Lance and Elaine Stitcher of Seaside Vacation Rentals built their company’s visibility through their own presence—appearing on podcasts, serving on the VRMA board, posting consistently on social media. When industry awards come around, voters already know them because they’ve shown up repeatedly over time.

Robin Craig with Moving Mountains in Colorado followed a similar path. His visibility in advocacy and industry events helped position his company as the number one luxury vacation rental brand in Colorado according to Forbes.

Neither started with sophisticated marketing budgets. They started with authenticity, consistency, and a willingness to be the face of their brand.

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🛋️ Setting the Table for Your Guests

Amber offered a hospitality metaphor that every host should remember. Think of your direct booking website as your home. You wouldn’t invite guests over without knowing their preferences, preparing thoughtfully, and creating a welcoming environment.

Yet many hosts bury important information, make booking harder than necessary, or—the cardinal sin—charge more on their direct booking site than on Airbnb. If you expect guests to trust you with their vacation, show them you’ve prepared for their arrival from the very first click.

This means clear pricing, easy navigation, mobile-friendly design, and content that speaks directly to your ideal guest’s needs. Everything on your site should signal that you understand who they are and why they’re traveling—the foundation of any strong email marketing strategy that turns one-time guests into repeat bookers.

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✨ Different Is Better Than Better

Sally Hogshead, one of Amber’s mentors and a two-time New York Times bestselling author, has a mantra that applies perfectly to vacation rental marketing: “Different is better than better.”

The secret to success isn’t trying to out-Airbnb Airbnb. It’s becoming more of who you already are. When you lean into your authentic values, your lived experience, and what makes your properties genuinely unique, you attract guests who are a perfect fit—and repel those who aren’t.

This saves time and energy on tire-kickers and price shoppers. A strong brand creates “hell yes” or “hell no” reactions. That clarity is a gift, not a limitation.

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🧪 The Practical First Step

Amber’s tactical advice for getting started couldn’t be simpler. Identify your five favorite past guests—the ones where everything clicked. Reach out and ask for fifteen minutes of their time. Ask questions that help you understand why they chose you, what made their stay memorable, and what they value most in travel.

Most people will say yes. They’re flattered to be your favorite. And the insights you gather become the foundation for everything else: your website copy, social media content, email sequences, and positioning.

Don’t guess. Talk to real people. Then build your brand around what resonates.

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🔥 Rapid Fire Questions with Amber

Book Recommendation: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. This memoir of surviving Nazi concentration camps taught Amber that the six inches of real estate between your ears is the most important thing you can manage in life. Frankl’s insight that we cannot avoid suffering but can choose how to cope with it remains relevant for every entrepreneur navigating uncertainty.

Mindset Advice for Starting Something New: Be curious, not judgmental. Amber borrows this from Walt Whitman to remind us that failure isn’t final—it’s feedback. She spent a year making expensive mistakes and calls it her “stupid tax.” Those lessons directly shaped her current work, which she’s never been more excited about.

One Tactical Takeaway: Interview your five favorite past guests. Ask meaningful questions that uncover why they chose you, what made their experience special, and what they value in travel. Use those insights to craft messaging that speaks directly to hearts, not just heads.

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🎧 Listen to the Full Episode

This conversation covers far more than we could capture here—from Amber’s celebrity event planning days to the neuroscience of trust, from the importance of employer branding to why entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal development program.

If you’re serious about reducing OTA dependency and building a business that reflects your values, this episode delivers the framework to make it happen.

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🚀 Ready to Build Your Direct Booking Brand?

Your direct booking website should be an extension of who you are—not a generic template that looks like everyone else’s. At CraftedStays, we build conversion-optimized websites designed specifically for short-term rental operators who want to stand out, build trust, and own their guest relationships.

Start your free trial at craftedstays.co and discover how simple it can be to launch a professional direct booking site that converts.

Transcription

Amber: A brand is just your reputation. Jeff Bezos said it best for personal branding is your personal brand, is what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room. That’s what it is, but that’s really any brand, and to me, a brand is the emotional connection that an organization has with it public.

Amber: That’s the Amber version because the way that I look at branding is through neuroscience and through psychology. And so for what we’re doing and what I’m doing with you is we are taking, okay, who are you authentically as a leader, as a founder, what is your business about authentically, not what you wanna be one day, but what you can offer right now.

Amber: What is that brand promise? Who you are authentically and the needs of your customers? And you put your visibility in between those two things and you kind of like. Have a matchmaking type situation.

Gil: Before we bring on our guests, 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 things. 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 built CraftedStays. 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 Booked Solid Show, the podcast where we talk everything, hospitality, operations, and direct bookings. On today’s show, I have Amber Hurdle on on the show. She’s a keynote speaker. She’s a published author. She is a brand strategist for one of the largest hospitality brands, and now dedicates her time on helping folks build personal brands, authentic personal brands.

 Gil: Today’s show is. So valuable. I’m started working with Amber, uh, since the late part of last year after I met her at VRMA and just the way that she thinks about personal brand and why it’s important for you to invest in your personal brand, whether or not you’re an entrepreneur or a property manager, even host yourself.

 Gil: Why brand? , Your personal brand is so important there. So today we get to dive deep into that why, how you should be thinking about it, how it kind of percolates into all the things that you do and kind of how you show up for your guest or your customers. So I am just ecstatic to bring Amber onto the show.

 Gil: So without further ado, let’s bring her on.

Gil: Hey Amber, welcome to the show.

Amber: Thanks for having me. I’m super pumped to be here.

Gil: Yeah, we didn’t meet all that long ago, but I feel like we bonded quite a bit. Um, I still remember meeting at the rooftop of the owner as, was it Happy Hour or Shindig after? Was it VRMA?

Amber: It was VRMA in Las Vegas.

Gil: Yeah. It was fun. It was fun. It was great to meet you in

Amber: We kind of party hopped.

Gil: we did party hop.

Gil: We did, we went, we went to a several different places. Um, I felt like I was in my twenties again, like I hadn’t been to Vegas in so long, and it reminded me why, like, I feel kind of old being in Vegas now.

Amber: Same.

Gil: Yeah. But it

Amber: And then also I was like, what are we doing? Could we go back to the Bellagio? Like, like say you’re in your forties without saying you’re in your forties.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. But it was really good to meet you there. Um, and like I. I think immediately after I reached out to John, and John’s the one that connected us and, uh, yep. Yep. Uh, so kudos, John, if you’re listening to this, um, that connected us and I was like, I need to talk to Amber. Um, and we ended up working together and I’m really excited to kind of mark out the whole year with you and kind of work with you on those things.

Gil: But I’m ecstatic to have you on the show as well too.

Amber: Yeah, I’m super pumped to be here.

Gil: Um, before we get too much into it, do you mind giving folks a introduction on who you are? Everything Amber.

Amber: Yeah. I’m a lunatic. You need to know that. I’m a weirdo, so there’s that. Um, but professionally I am a brand strategist and a professional keynote speaker. So I do everything from work with individuals or organizations on brand clarity and positioning and what does that mean, um, internally and externally and all your key stakeholders, and then also.

Amber: Longtime member of the National Speakers Association, the Global Speakers Federation. And, um, I spend a lot of time delivering keynote speeches. So, um, yeah, just that’s the, the gist of it. Um, my, my background is very strong in hospitality. Um, and not to go too far back, but literally as a child, my dad’s a drummer and my mom’s a chef, so I don’t know anything other than entertainment and hospitality.

Amber: Like from the time I was born, I was literally born in Las Vegas ’cause my dad had a gig at, um, at Caesar’s Palace. You can’t make it up. Like,

Gil: gosh, you.

Amber: then we moved back to California. So, um, but all that to say, obviously, um, I used to have a celebrity event planning company. So, um, that was branding, experiential marketing.

Amber: It was very precise. It wasn’t like, oh, we’re having a party. Like, there was a reason, an outcome for the party. So that was everything from the CMA awards after party for Sony, um, Sony Music, Nashville or Allen Jackson’s 50th birthday, which wasn’t really just a birthday party, it was also like an employee type type situation.

Amber: Um, Jessica Simpson, Carrie Underwood. I could go on, um, with the different people that I used to have the privilege to work with. Um, lots of things have, like, there’s so much of my life that has tragedy, whatever that has kind of shifted where my attention went. So I stepped away from that. And, um, long story short, after a lot of different things, I ended up with Gaylord Hotels, which was a life changing experience.

Amber: I was literally just with the former, um, director of Housekeeping. We had lunch together while I was in Nashville. And, um, it, it just taught me so much about how to do hospitality like. At a whole different level. And so it was my job. Um, I oversaw basically the internal PR department to keep all of our employees happy and satisfied and motivated and cherished, or they felt the love from the company.

Amber: So they would do the same thing for our guests. So, um, fast forward to when Marriott purchased Gaylord. I cut my teeth in the m and a community by doing the internal rebrand for that. So no big deal. My property, Gaylord Opry land, um, and our attractions because we had like the Ryman Auditorium in the General Jackson and, you know, all of our attractions, um, we were the largest.

Amber: We, they are now the largest Marriott in the world, in the world.

Gil: did not know that.

Amber: Uh, Marriott is the largest hotel brand in the world, so you can imagine how daunting that was to do that. Um, and then I left and I started my consulting company, coaching and consulting company. I got certified by the International Coaching Federation.

Amber: I started doing hardcore executive coaching and corporate America, and I was doing training in corporate America with different hotel brands and whatnot. And then just little fell into, um, working a lot with entrepreneurs and founders. And because of that m and a experience, I attracted m and a work. And 13 years later, somehow I’m on your show talking about it all.

Amber: So

Gil: So what are you, what are you doing nowadays? What do? What do you focus now?

Amber: I am so excited about the kind of work that I’m doing right now that you’re involved in. Because I do have some retainer clients, like just a few retainer clients, but the majority of the work that I’m doing is now I have Brand Edge Accelerator, which is a membership. So like, you don’t get direct access to me, but you, like, I literally just this morning did a 90 minute workshop where we, where I taught my members, which we’re in beta right now, but maybe by the time this airs will be public.

Amber: I taught them how to pitch you to be a guest on your podcast. Not you, but people like you. And like how do you do that respectfully and in a way that like leverages the opportunity so that it’s working overtime for you. And so that’s what you’re gonna hear me say a lot. Um, so we got Brandage Accelerator time out on that.

Amber: But I say that in order to position yourself in this new economy that we’re finding ourselves in, like your brand is your, um, is your currency. And it needs to work overtime for you. So I have that level. And then the level that you’re in, which is the Vanguard Council, and that is a peer advisory group. I wanna be very careful not to call it a mastermind, because that kind of just is now like influencers and you know, it’s like a Facebook group that you pay too much for.

Amber: And what we’re doing is like digging in on the same concepts, but very intentionally. I think the thing I’m most excited about in my work right now is I’m done talking about like, brands and, or like colors and fonts and that sort of thing. That’s part of it. But I’m going deep, I’m going deep into your energetic makeup, into what’s actually going on in your life, into your real priorities.

Amber: Like I know your fatherhood and your being a, a good husband is so important to you, and we’re not gonna ignore that. And as we’re, we’re planning the things that you’re going to do to take up your time in order to position your personal brand to give the business. Opportunity because people do business with people they know, like, and trust.

Amber: They don’t do business with logos. So I’m really focusing mostly on founders and, you know, senior leader, leader executives, if they’re not like the actual owner in order to position you to get business results. And then I’m doing keynote speaking and, um, and some other things behind the scenes that really aren’t relevant, but like I am wholly focused on brandage accelerated and Vanguard Council, um, moving forward and could not be happier to be more like in the trenches with more people, like literally showing them what works and not just the BS that you’re gonna get on chatt JT.

Gil: Yeah. You went through many ways of career evolution.

Amber: Yeah.

Gil: what more recently had led you down this? I don’t know if it’s gonna be epiphany or this path of clarity. This is like where you wanna focus. Like what was that moment there? You’re like, that’s a problem I wanna solve. Or was it more gradual and you kinda like fell into it and you’re like, I wanna do more of this stuff.

Amber: Um, so, you know, I, I break my business into, I do personal branding, I do employer branding, and I do business branding, and it’s all branding. But when I break it into those three buckets, it’s easier to kind of compartmentalize and say like, these are the frameworks for this kind of stuff and et cetera, et cetera.

Amber: So the majority, no matter what I do, whether I’m working in a corporate entity, ’cause I’ve, I’ve done Fortune 50 companies all the way to solopreneurs. So if I’m, no matter which way I take it, if I’m working on the employer brand, I still have to work on the personal brands of the executives or the founder.

Amber: If I’m working on the business brand, I still have to work on the personal brands. And then I do strictly personal branding. So I’m like, let’s see here, which 1:00 AM I doing the most of? Personal branding, which one do I get the most keynotes for? Personal branding. And I started seeing companies lay off people.

Amber: In droves. And because I have employer brand central, I was very aware of like government statistics and things like this. And this was way before the government fired everybody too. So when I’m thinking like, when people are like, oh, you’re so brave to be an entrepreneur, and I’m like, you’re so brave to be an employee.

Amber: Like you could get hacked to tomorrow. You have no say so in it. I can go drum up business tomorrow and have a paycheck. Like I don’t see it that way. So when I started seeing like, okay, it’s not safe to work for corporate America. It’s not safe to work for the government. Where’s it safe? Take care of me.

Amber: So let’s invest in you, whether you’re working for a company or not. Like you still need to be developing your professional reputation because at the end of the day, that’s the only thing you actually have control over. So if you do the work now, now you have the opportunity to, um, make waves in the future.

Amber: And I can tell you that literally within 24 hours, I have created a company from somebody who. Basically had to tell his boss where to go because his boss was like literally verbally abusive to him. And I was like, bag that go. By the time he landed in the, in the city where he lives, I had a whole brand for him and within the first six weeks he was profitable for the rest of, of, and he’s still doing it.

Amber: So if you don’t think that you can, you can.

Gil: Yeah. I, I, I had to learn this a hard way when I first built Creta stay. I had been a product director, a product manager for 15 years, six other startups. I was kind of that glue between our marketing sales, go to market teams and the engineering and design team. I was kind of like that middle person there.

Gil: So I, I kind of saw everything that the company was doing and in many ways, like in some of the companies, I was employee number one and had to build the team from there. And that was, that was very enlightening and I think that that gave me a lot of confidence into starting craft estates. I was like, okay, I built a company from the very beginning.

Gil: I was employee number one. And I, but I think that the challenge there was that all of those were venture backed. They were all Silicon Valley where we had millions and millions of dollars of funding. And when I created crafted days. One, I I, I had interviewed some of the founders I’ve had a chance to get to know and, and work alongside.

Gil: And they advised me that if you’re building craft estates in today’s market, if you can build this and bootstrap it yourself, you’re gonna be in a much better position because you have proven it to the market. And I took that advice and it was actually really, really good advice. I’m so happy I did not take funding early on because I could build the best product I could for our customers.

Amber: Without the pressure of hitting. Vanity metrics.

Gil: Exactly. Exactly. Um, but I think the challenge that I didn’t realize I got myself into was, it’s not just about building a really, really good product. Um, you have to get yourself out there and building that brand and all the marketing and I, I would think that. Craft estates has done okay on it. And that’s kind of like why I am so excited for us to kind of work together is we’ve grown craft estates all organically.

Gil: It’s all from word of mouth. It’s all from people in the industry that has talked to us, that has worked with us. The, the, the, just the amount of traction that we’re able to get for a lot of our customers. And they share that. And so we’ve grown all organically. And I think that that is also the challenge is that now we’ve matured the product so much.

Gil: We’ve poured so much in engineering that I just feel like there’s just so much potential that we, there’s so many hosts that we haven’t really, that don’t know about us that, and so like, I’ll to

Amber: And I said that before the call is like, your potential is ridiculous ’cause you’ve done the work.

Gil: yeah, and I, I think that like branding is one of the things I didn’t really think all too much about. Um, and I would love for you to kind of dig into it and kind of how you’re looking at maybe even us, you can feel free to like, use me as an, as an example of anything. Um, but like. We don’t do paid ads, we don’t do any of that stuff.

Gil: The only kinda leverage point I have is this podcast, but this podcast is really, I didn’t create this to build my brand. It wasn’t meant for that. It was meant to really service our customers because I, we were launching these really beautiful sites and a lot of customers would come to us and say, and ask us, how do we drive more traffic?

Gil: How do I do X, Y, or Z? And although I come from e-commerce and have a lot of marketing experience in kind of the e e-commerce brand perspective, I found that like there’s so many different ways to attract and grow your direct bookings. And rather than being be like saying that I’m the expert of everything, I would much rather bring the experts into it that have done really well.

Gil: And the podcast has been amazing, but all to say like. I haven’t really spent all that energy, all that much energy into branding. So I would love for you to kind of dissect and kind of give us a, a sense of like, first off, like what is branding in the first place and as a founder or someone as a property manager, like how should you think about branding and why is it important?

Amber: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, you servicing your customers in a strategic way and, and giving them what they need is part of your brand. You are, what you’re doing through your podcast is saying, I’m showing up for you. I recognize this need that you have, and I’m addressing it. And so if I am a crafted stay, um, client or customer, I’m, I’m excited because you give me all of these additional resources.

Amber: Um, I’ve got some tools that I use that have like school communities or Facebook groups or whatever. And, um, and it sometimes that could be a little overwhelming. So that’s just an aside. Um, a brand is. It is just your reputation. Um, Jeff Bezos said it best for personal branding is your, your personal brand is what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room.

Amber: That’s, that’s what it is. But that’s really any brand. And, and to me, a brand is the emotional connection that an organization has with its public. That’s, that’s the amber version because the way that I look at branding is through neuroscience and through psychology. And so for, for what we’re doing and like what I’m doing with you is we are taking, okay, who are you authentically as a leader, as a founder, what is your business about authentically not what you wanna be one day, but what you can offer right now.

Amber: What is that brand promise? Who you are authentically and the needs of your customers? And you put your visibility in between those two things and you, you kind of like. Have a matchmaking type situation. Okay? So that’s brand marketing is taking that brand and then sending out signals to those key stakeholders.

Amber: ’cause it doesn’t necessarily always have to be in branding. It’s not just about consumers or prospects, it’s about, it is about potentially investors. It is about community. And if you’re a vacation rental manager, it is your government, it is your community. If you’re not considering that in your brand and your key stakeholders, then you’re going to have those problems when, you know, there’s, um, there’s issues with regulations or, um, your neighbors are saying, oh, STR vr, they’re taking over all the affordable housing like that.

Amber: You need to get ahead of that as part of your brand. So just to be super clear, your brand is the emotional connection that, that a organization has with this public. That’s not the official branding definition. That’s Amber’s. Um, did I answer that? Did I overshoot it?

Gil: Yeah, yeah. So you, you touched upon a lot of different things. You mentioned like. So branding is kind of like your reputation in the world and how you kind of portray and, and put yourself out there. And then there’s the marketing is like, how do you amplify that? How do you get that out in the world?

Gil: In, there’s this term like, um, called like positioning. How does that fall? It kind of in, is it in the branding sphere? It’s branding.

Amber: Yeah. And so you’re positioning, again, the, in that kind of InBetween stage, the visibility that is you positioning yourself. And so I, I use this analogy often. Um, I’m a, I’m a California girl who is a born again southerner. ’cause I spent about 30 years just outside of Nashville. And, um, I could tell you about some fishing.

Amber: Okay. And it took everything in me not to just say fishing. Um, so when you’re thinking about positioning, I want you to think about, okay, I wanna go catch a catfish. And I’ll be like, okay, great. Um, here’s some squid and, um, here’s a, a, a boat that is meant for the ocean, and I’m going to drive you to the ocean.

Amber: And best of luck, you can’t catch a catfish in the ocean and you certainly can’t do it with squid. So if you want to catch a catfish, you have to go to a murky pond or a, a lake or a creek or something, and you’ve gotta have a stinky, like chicken, liver or something. And then you’re gonna drop it in.

Amber: You’re not gonna be pulling, you’re just gonna drop it in and read a book and wait for it to, to catch. That’s how you catch a catfish. So when you’re talking about positioning, you need to know what is your lure and what body of water are you going to, and if you don’t know those things, this is how most people market is.

Amber: They go to the ocean to go try to catch a catfish because they don’t know any better. So let’s, let’s, like, we’ve got to, when we’re talking about positioning again. Who are we? What do we offer? And just free, free advice here, you’re, if you have a brand promise, it’s what do you do? Who do you do it for? And how do you do it uniquely?

Amber: So what do you do that will probably tell you, um, well, who do you do it for will tell you what body of water you’re going to, you don’t even get to do. What do you do until you catch ’em? And then how do you do it uniquely? That’s your lure. That’s your lure. That is positioning. And if you can’t position yourself in a way that shows why you versus everybody else, you need to keep refining your positioning.

Gil: And, and that, that, that kinda goes back to like the, the branding side of things. So like almost it feels like the branding is. Almost the first step before anything else, before the positioning happens. Because if you don’t know what you stand for, it’s hard for you to then position outwards because you could be positioning something that maybe, and I would love to kind of hear your, your, your thoughts on it, but authenticity, um, you talk about it a lot when we, when we have a convers conversations about authenticity, like how important is that in the overall branding, positioning and all that?

Amber: It’s, it, especially for personal branding, it’s, it’s, uh, non-negotiable for me. I just, you either wanna be an Amazon influencer or you wanna have an authentic personal brand. And I’m not, I’m, I’m picking, I’m not saying Amazon influencers aren’t authentic ’cause a lot of them are. Um, but what we’re doing is not about like, who do people want me to be and how, what do I say or what do I do and order to get these people to like me?

Amber: Like, that’s not what we’re doing. You’re gonna find your people by just. Being you. I know I’m not for everybody. You know, I’m not for everybody. I’m weird. Okay. So it’s, it’s really about getting, getting into your own personal values. What do I value? Like how do I make choices in life to decide this is for me, or this is not for me.

Amber: Those are your personal values. And then you need to do a, a dig into what are my innate gifts? Like your project management skills and your technical skills and your ability to like, communicate super technical stuff with like a sales team that needs to, you know, have sexy, sellable words attached to it.

Amber: Like that’s a gift that not a lot of people have. And so now we’re going to, we’re gonna take inventory of what those gifts are, and then we’re going to look at like your pedigree and your, um, and your lived experience and your work experience. Why should I believe you? And so a lot of people wanna put some brand out there, but they wanna like get into a new industry or they wanna start talking to new people.

Amber: And it’s like, well, you’ve got a whole career history of people over here that would probably be interested. And then maybe you can evolve your brand to start collecting more people in your audience. But like, let’s start with where you already have authority. That’s a big word as well. If you can take your authenticity and then position it with authority.

Amber: Now we’re cooking with gas.

Gil: Got it. Have you seen success? Or maybe a kind of counter to that where folks try something and they don’t lean on that authenticity and kind of where things you see start to fall short and kinda why authenticity is so important to you, especially when you’re looking at the right clients to work with.

Amber: Yeah. I, there’s somebody right now, and I won’t, I, I’m not even sure I could. Get her name. There’s actually a couple people right now that are like big influencers that are on all of like the diary of the CEO and you know, those big, uh, big, big podcasts. Um, there’s two right now who are being questioned because they don’t have the background that they said that they were having.

Amber: Um, there’s been, you know, I mean, we could think to all the different scandals in in the media, it’s gonna come out. Like people are going to sniff it. And I think now too, like the world has changed so significantly since 2020 and people are just exhausted by fake. And as we’re moving into ai, we’re going to need more real.

Amber: But even with the people that I’ve personally worked with, like I’ve had to let go of customers. ’cause I’m like, Nope, can’t do that. If you’re not going to show people who you really are, I don’t know what to do with you. And so go find somebody that can help you, like package that up in whatever falsified way you want to, but that’s not for me.

Amber: ’cause you’ll fail.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah.

Amber: And, and if I could say too. It is not always a nefarious thing. Sometimes people are insecure or they have imposter syndrome or they listen to, you know, some, you know, thought leader that’s like hashtag boom, just do it. You know, like that they’re, they’re being misled and so the reason why they’re insecure and the reason why they struggle putting content out and the reason why they don’t wanna take a stage or they don’t wanna be visible and there’s a lot of friction and resistance there is because they’re not authentic.

Amber: And so, oh, I just, I don’t know what I just did, but we have fireworks now. See, it was a very, it was a very important statement I just made. So when you are authentic and you’re pulling from your values and your own lived experience and your own opinions and everything that is aligned with you and who you are, that is when you can go out into the world with confidence because no one can tell you that you’re wrong.

Amber: ’cause it’s all you.

Gil: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s, I think that that’s probably why we, we had a couple conversations first before we ended up starting to work together, but I think that that’s kinda why I felt like there was a good collaboration that I can have with you. Um, because a lot of what you just said is, I always felt like it was a, a negative thing.

Gil: I always felt like because I was softer in the way that I present myself. Or that I don’t like to boast on things that I’m not good at. And like it kinda goes to like the podcast, right? Like I, I’d much rather bring on folks that are better than me in, in, in these areas and not try to say something I’m, I’m not.

Gil: I think that, that, those are kinda like the reasons why I felt like you’re taking not necessarily the negatives in, in, in kind of who I am, but trying to figure out like, okay, how do I work with Gil with what he has and really make sure that we can amplify that.

Amber: Yeah. Uh, Sally Hogshead, who’s a two time New York time bestselling author, she’ll soon be a three time. She’s working on her next book. She’s, she’s a mentor of mine, I love her dearly. And, um, also owner of the Fascinate program, uh, or assessment, which you have or will soon take. And she says that different is better than better.

Amber: And she says that the secret to success is to become more of who you already are, and I could not agree more with her. Um, and so if you think about like high school, nobody wants to go back to high school except for like. The football star who peaked and then never did anything else after that. So he can go back.

Amber: The rest of us don’t want to. But when you’re in high school, it’s like, you remember when, like the kids that try to be like everyone, and it didn’t matter if they were like the EMU group or like the redneck group or you know, the popular kids or whatever. It was like they were just trying to morph. And that’s exhausting.

Amber: That’s why nobody likes it. But if you just show up and you’re like, this is who I am and this is what I have to offer, I mean, you’re, you’re gonna hear me say this. I want you to turn people off. I want you to, I want people to land on my website and be like, woo, that’s not for me. Go. ’cause I don’t have time to talk to you.

Amber: I don’t have time for a sales conversation with somebody that I know is not a right fit. And if you have a solid brand, it should be for people, a hell yes or a hell no. Make it easy for people to know if you’re a fit for them or not by simply becoming more of who you already are.

Gil: Yeah. I love that. And I’ve heard this many, many times, uh, in many different conversations. When we talk about branding, we always talk about if you’re, if you’re everything for everyone, then you’re nothing for no one. And I, I hear that a lot. I, I, I especially appreciate kind of how you position.

Gil: I, I don’t even know if I can even. Phrase it again, but you said it so eloquently that like, you wanna turn people off or you want to, and you wanna make sure you say Hell yes, and hell no. And so I, I really, that, that resonates with me as we’re thinking about, like, okay, so a lot of your work is on the kind of company and personal branding side of things.

Gil: A lot of our listeners here are property manager hosts. How does this kind of relate back to, or does it even relate back to how they present themselves to the outside world, to their guest? And does that even make an impact on their direct booking? Is that, is, is that even part of the equation or is it just so outside of it?

Amber: If you get into a lot of these, like Airbnb host groups or whatever, like they’ll say, like, put a female picture in your listing. Um, I went through, I know it was a property management company, but um, I couldn’t figure out how to book direct and I kind of booked it last minute. And it was Christie. It was Christie.

Amber: It wasn’t even a, it wasn’t the property management. I didn’t know that until I got into the condo and saw who the property manager was. And so it’s happening no matter what. But if you are, if, let me give you an, a really great example. Um, and many of you might have just, you know, a few properties or whatever and, and I’m, I’m gonna talk about Seaside Vacation Rentals.

Amber: They’re, um, longtime customer of mine. And if you look at Lance and Elaine Stitcher, who are the, the co-founders, husband and wife, you see that they put themselves out in the world. And so because they put themselves out in the world, they do. They do podcasts, um, they’re on the VRMA board, the Vacation Rental Management Association board.

Amber: Um, they, um, they’re in their own social media. Um, their, their community, their guests know who they are. And so when they submit for awards, well of course the people who are voting on the awards know who they are ’cause they’re so highly visible. So if you’ve got like a couple and a company that’s already visible, you know that they rock, you see that they’re rocking year round, isn’t that an easier vote for them versus somebody that like, isn’t as visible and doesn’t give you enough consistent evidence over time.

Amber: So they built their brand on their own backs. You can talk to both of them. They, neither of them knew what they were doing. I mean, had no clue what they were doing. Maybe Lance a little bit ’cause he worked for a property management company, but they just dove in. And I think Jody Fusco, if anybody kind of knows the players of VRMA, she’s the, um, the president of VRMA mentored them.

Amber: And, and so that’s a really good example. Go follow them on TikTok. Go follow them on Facebook, follow them on LinkedIn, and you’ll see that they’re, they didn’t even know that they were doing it. Like they weren’t intentionally like positioning their personal brands. But that’s exactly what happened. And another quick example is Robin Craig with Moving Mountains and, and, um, Colorado.

Amber: So Robin is very involved in advocacy, same type of stuff as Lance and Elaine. He’s out there, he’s on podcasts, he’s doing webinars, he’s doing panels, he’s speaking, he’s out there. Well, moving mountains, according to Forbes Magazine is the number one luxury vacation rental company in, in Colorado. How do you think that happened?

Amber: It doesn’t happen without some, some human being, some face, some person getting out there and being the face of their brand. So if you’re talking about direct bookings, if you’re wanting to get like out of OTA dependency. Then just start with being you start with being you, and then decide, okay, if I had three things that I wanted to accomplish for my business, grow my revenue by X percent, um, maybe hire a couple team members.

Amber: Um, and, and then I want to, um, you know, get with crafted stays. So I have a direct booking website. Like, okay, there’s three things now that I know that I want to accomplish. How can I as a human being use my personality and my beliefs and my values and the resources that I have to me to drive that towards these goals?

Amber: Once you have that under control, now let’s start talking about the business brand. What do you want people to believe about your brand? And I don’t wanna hear you say best customer service ever, unless you’re Amex platinum. You don’t get to say that. Okay. Um, and anything vanilla, so I just rebranded. Um.

Amber: Uh, Sanibel moorings, uh, brand refresh, I will say. And we’re really, really focusing on, um, pet friendliness. Why? Because there’s only like two resorts, two actual full, you know, resorts that have amenities and everything are pet friendly. Well, what do you think Gen Z and millennials love? That’s your next generation.

Amber: So yes, there’s a lot of boomers that are currently the customers, but if we want to fill in the new growth of, of, of guests in the future years, we’re have to start talking to that next generation right now.

Gil: Yeah. You, you mentioned about something very interesting, um, in your earlier example of, of Lance and, and Elaine, um, and how they kind of grew Seaside vacation rentals. That kind of leads me to like, one of the things that we did early on, and I don’t know if we did it, we knew it intently, we saw the data on it, but.

Gil: We now ask everybody during the onboarding flow to upload their personal picture and their host profile. Similar to how they did on Airbnb, when we started launching these websites, that was not a section on kind of the websites that we built there. And over time we saw some customers starting to add that independently on there.

Gil: And we were looking at the numbers that we saw that there was a significant increase in conversion because someone had their own port, like their own picture there. And so now we almost make it a mandatory field when you’re signing up with grab days that we asked you for that host bio and that host picture there, some people still put a property management logo or a cabin picture there, and they, they’ll, they’ll hide themselves kind of behind the brand.

Gil: But what we’ve seen from the data perspective through our testing was that it made a big difference on conversion because ultimately. People when they go onto your website. Trust is something that you have to win over.

Amber: a hundred percent.

Gil: When someone’s shopping on Airbnb, they know how big an Airbnb brand is. There’s reputation there, there’s backs, like you can, there’s a lot of transparency when you’re booking on Airbnb.

Gil: However, when you’re trying to book direct that that’s not there, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re talking, you’re booking with a stranger and you’re oftentimes spending thousands and thousands of dollars there. So someone has to get to know you and trust you there. So that, I think that’s kind of why we almost craft the onboarding flow to include that.

Gil: And, uh, I’m glad you kind of brought that up here because you’re, you’re giving me a very different perspective from the marketing lens on why you as a property management company may not necessarily wanna hide behind that. So like, I come from the data, like I saw the data coming from it, but you’re, you’re, you’re talking about like the roots of like why that is important in the first place.

Amber: Well, and again, it goes back to like psychology and neuroscience, right? So I mean, we’ve got parts of our brains, um, the two that I talk about the most, your prefrontal cortex. That’s how you make values-based decisions. And then you have the hippocampus, which helps you, um, see consistency in patterns over time.

Amber: That builds trust. And so a, your content marketing and your visibility as whether it’s your brand or you as a founder owner. Um, or executive that’s going to help with that consistency to build that trust over time. But the things like the picture, that’s, that’s the prefrontal cortex, because this isn’t a hotel, this is a home.

Amber: And so I wanna feel like I’m staying in a home is who’s, is it your home? I don’t need, I don’t need to know that you have 50 different owners. I, I need to know Christie, that’s what I need to know to make, to make this part of my brain go, oh, okay. I can trust this. And you are the website expert, so you, you can correct me on this if this is wrong.

Amber: But, um, you know, it’s, it’s always been my priority and I should probably look at the statistics now. Um, the about page is really important of any website because other than the primary homepage, that traditionally has been the number one highly, um, frequented page on a website. I don’t know if that’s still true, but it used to be.

Gil: Yeah, actually we’re now starting to run tests on moving that host file from the homepage into dedicated about US page because some of our larger property managers, because there’s just so much going on about their personal brand and their team and what they do and the values they stand behind, they’ve actually created separate pages on on those.

Gil: We haven’t actually run the numbers on like the differences between, between them. It is just mainly because they are a larger property manager. They have more to talk about. Um, but that may be something that’s worthwhile to force the test. We’re we’re constantly testing on our side to figure out like, okay, how do we build more and more trust signals?

Amber: I just, I just, um, earlier when you said that I, I made a note for you. I’m like, Ooh, I need to put this in his file. Um, because what a differentiator for you, because you do volume and you can, you can test things. Across the board versus all different, like you have data. Like that’s why Airbnb is the, is the gorilla, is they have all the data.

Amber: Like you have data. Why would I, why would I go over here and spend all this money to create this kind of a website when I can go over here, have one up in six minutes and at least an initial one. Right? And then the people who I’m connected to are educating me and also telling me real time data to help me optimize my website for conversion.

Amber: Like, come on.

Gil: That’s, I, I think that that’s kind of why. We often win some of the larger accounts that we have right now. So in the early days, craft estates was built for property managers like me that have a handful of doors, um, maybe anywhere from three to 12 doors. And then more recently, probably in the last six months, larger property managers with portfolios from 70 to couple hundred are coming to us.

Gil: And in the very beginning, I was surprised on why they would want us, because our website builder is not like you can’t customize every single little pixel and, and everything. We, we

Amber: By design.

Gil: we try to make it structured in a way, and we learn from what we think of like frameworks. When we’re thinking about a website, we’re thinking about like, what are the things that work really well?

Gil: And we almost think of it as like a science experiment type of thing. And I find that the, the true marketers, the really professional property managers, they actually like that side of our business. They are okay that okay, maybe I can’t control every single thing and have it double grids or like two column layouts and all those types of things.

Gil: They’re okay with our system not doing that. Um, because they much prefer like, oh, what does the booking flow look like? How should that change if it’s on mobile versus desktop? What have they learned? How should the page be structured? What’s on the page? They care more about those types of things. And the nice thing is that when we run these tests for these really large property managers, it ends up percolating down to where a solo host now has a very structured way of building a very professional website without having to learn all that stuff.

Gil: So that’s, that’s been, that’s been a learning experience on, on my side that probably over the last like six to eight months that we’ve working with larger like marketing teams, it’s giving us a lot of data points to think about.

Amber: Well, and I think data is, is the big word, right? So, I mean, again, I’ve been in business for 13 years. Wild. Um, and so I’ve seen a lot of iterations of, of how we do websites and yeah, even me, 13 years ago, I was like, I want it to be pretty. No, I want it to swoosh that way. Like, nobody cares. Literally nobody cares but you, um, I mean, you might get a like, Ooh, that’s neat.

Amber: Like every once in a while, but what we really care about is conversions, right? So it’s, it is really more about the technical aspects of your website, and especially with LLMs now, I mean, there’s, we’ve got SEO, we’ve got GEO, we’ve got all these things that we’re worried about. And so now, like, especially from a branding perspective, we have to brand.

Amber: With that in mind because that is one of the bodies of water that we have to go fishing and if people are over on the Chet GPT or Gemini or whatever it is that they’re on Krock, we have to make sure that the website, our content, everything is feeding and fueling that so that our lure is where it needs to be.

Amber: I and, and I just think like the, your method is one, one plus one equals three because you’re not like, okay, we’re crafted stays and you’re my client, but we got all this over here too. That’s gonna like help you be successful because we’ve got all of these different data points.

Gil: I, I, I, that’s one of the things I really love about kind of how we built in, why we built it this way. Um, just slight tangent for a moment here, any of our listeners here that are crafted days, users, we haven’t announced this yet, but like in quarter three. Actually quarter four. Quarter four October timeframe, we released a lot of upgrades kind of behind the scenes that now gives all of your property data to LLMs.

Gil: So LLMs, they like data in a very structured format. So your your your page there. Uh, even though we have the name of your listing, how many, how many does it sleep, all your availability, all that stuff, even though it’s visibly on the page for someone to kind of scroll through. When a LLM goes through it, they want it in a very structured format, almost hierarchal.

Gil: Um. And so what we did is we figured out like how LLMs are trying to pick up this information. And I, there’s actually a lot of data points from the e-commerce industry form from where I’m able to extract that. But anyways, we’re able to now package that information so that LLMs can pick up that information much more readily.

Gil: So they’re not having to scrape text on the page. We’re give, we’re spoon feeding it to them in the format that they want. So for any of our users, you’ll automatically benefit from that stuff. Um, if you aren’t a craft to state users and you have your website through some other builder, make sure that they are, they have the right schema markdowns for, for it.

Amber: Yeah. So important.

Gil: yeah. So, sorry, that’s a slight tangent. Um, and I, we

Amber: a great tangent.

Gil: and I, I just haven’t, we just haven’t had the chance to, to write articles about that. But for of our listeners here, I wanna make sure that they got that.

Amber: Yeah.

Gil: awesome. Amber, we went through a lot of. Discussions about kind of how you think about your personal brands, why that’s important even in the hospitality space.

Gil: Is there anything else on kind of the direct booking space or even personal brand space that you want to share with us?

Amber: Yeah, I mean, on the direct booking space away from personal brands, just talking about your, your actual business brand. Um, I, I just want to invite you to think about, think about your website as. Like your home base, like your direct booking site is your home. And so if you’re going to be a good host for your home, then you probably should, should like set things up for your guests according to how they like it.

Amber: Like you should know, well, what’s their favorite cocktail and do they have any food allergies? And you know, do they have small children? Should we do an earlier DI dinner? Like you’re thinking through all of these things to invite people into your home and to provide hospitality for ’em. We literally provide hospitality for a living in the vacation rental industry.

Amber: So let’s think about it that way. If Airbnb or VRBO or booking.com or any of them, you know, they’re very structured, they’re, they’re ready. They know exactly who their guests are, they know exactly what they need and they make that happen for them. The reason why they’re still using Airbnb and not your direct booking website is because you have not set the table for your guest in a way that helps them be successful.

Amber: You’re bury things or you don’t have anything at all. Or, um, it’s easier to book through Airbnb or this is the one that kills me is when I go, and it’s more expensive on the direct booking website than it is on Airbnb. I was just like, come on guys, set the table. Be hospitable. Sh look, show your guests that you’re ready to receive them at that first point of contact if you expect them to book with you and think that you’re ready to receive them physically.

Gil: Yeah, I think you, you raised a good point about really knowing who’s staying at your place and I think like, kind of going back to it. Along with understanding kind of who you are, how you wanna show up for your guests, is also like taking that other lens of like, okay, what does our guests expect? Why are, what are the problems that they’re trying to solve?

Gil: Why are they going on vacation? Who are they coming with? And really getting very intimate ab with that. Yes, there, um, you can read your reviews and they’ll tell you a whole bunch of like, what are the amenities that they really care about and who they’re traveling with, and what are the best moments of those?

Gil: Those are things that you almost wanna see all throughout all the different touch points. And that it’s not just your direct booking website,

Amber: Right.

Gil: the welcome mess. Your, the welcome message that you send out to your guests. It’s how that some, maybe some of the content that you put on social media, um, it’s, you should do this, how and what you put on your FAQs.

Amber: Yes.

Gil: for instance, you are servicing families with young kids. them know in the FAQs that you provide, the highchair that you provide, the, uh, the pack and plays, or maybe even if it’s really big part of your niche, you may even want to create dedicated pages about those types of things so that guests know, oh, Ashley, this host has really thought about that.

Gil: Like how much more valuable is it as a guest that where you go onto a website, you see beautiful properties, but you also see separate pages and tabs and lures that says, oh, this host understands me. If we take a vacation with this host, we know that they’ve thought through these things already. It just kind of going back to, I forgot how you said it, but the different is be better than I forgot.

Amber: is better than better.

Gil: exactly. Exactly. And I think that that’s what it is, is like being different and really showcasing like why you’re different and, and why you’re a hell yes. For that, for that guest there.

Amber: Absolutely. Have you had, um, Tyann Marcin with, um, she’s got Missouri Branson family Treats.

Gil: I have not, I’ve, I’ve come across her so many different times. We’re, I’m also in Branson, so she’s, she’s in a lot of,

Amber: Stop it. Oh my gosh. You guys have to meet.

Gil: yeah, no, we’ve, we’ve met, we’ve, we’ve met multiple times, but I haven’t had her on the show. Um,

Amber: Okay, well, I say, I say Tyann and, and also she’s one of my best friends on the planet. I talk to her literally every single day. Um, uh, we kind of have a, a little girl gang, but she, she’s the queen of guest experience for a reason. And, and so like my brain is going in two different directions.

Amber: Like at first I’m like, okay, I know you’ve had orally Benjamin on the show, and I know that she’s talked about lasso. And so like she’s, if you go back and listen to that episode, she’s going to tell you like how you can capture some of this information. So you do understand your guest at a deeper level.

Amber: And then what Ty’s like super gift is, is guest communication. So when you’re talking about, like, I think depending on, she has like big homes and like, you know, multi-generation staying together. And so she really thinks about, you know, the burden on the planner. And so how do I focus on the planner so that that person has everything that they need since they’re taking care of everybody else.

Amber: And then she’s got like a 20 something. Touchpoint of messaging from the time they book to the time that they get there for those larger homes. Now, if it’s a smaller home, maybe not 20, but I would just, I would love to see her on your show, but also, I mean, she’s done webinars and stuff, so like Google her and start looking at how she is taking the brand and, and like, okay, you’ve already committed to us now, and so now we’re gonna start that hospitality literally with the first message we send you after booking.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I, I knew she was big in kind of like the Branson market. I knew she has a pretty sizable portfolio there, and she has a, I forgot what the, the rate was, but her direct booking rate is phenomenal. Um, I, I did not know that she was the queen of guest experience. Um,

Amber: She literally just changed her LinkedIn profile. I’m like, why does your LinkedIn profile not have a crown in it? Like

Gil: I, I, I, I, I do know that like the, the, the, the word queen was, uh, has been, has been used in her title multiple times.

Amber: Yeah, but it’s legitimately the queen of guest experience and again, that the guest experience is part of your brand experience. And so, and that’s a word that I use a lot. Like I don’t, I might say brand strategy, but I also am gonna say brand experience, because how are people experiencing you? That’s where the emotional connection is coming from.

Gil: Yeah. Awesome. Amber, this has been a, just a wealth of, uh, I, it’s, it is been a great show. Like I am so happy that we had a chance to meet and work together on things. And, um, and also for you to kind of spend time here today and kind of share your knowledge with folks, we usually end the show with three questions.

Gil: Um, so first question first, what’s a good book recommendation?

Amber: Okay. My favorite book is one that I read in my early twenties. And it remains at 46 years old. My favorite book, and that is Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And it’s the story of, um, a prisoner of war. And he was a Jewish man in World War ii, and it’s all about how he kept his mindset under control to survive it and at a concentration camp.

Amber: So, um, as a young woman who was, you know, a teen mom and trying to figure things out, I had no idea that I had PTSD at the time. I hadn’t even been diagnosed with A DHD. My alphabet had diagnosis and not descended upon me yet. So I’m just kind of like a boiling, just fury on the inside of all this stuff that I didn’t know what to do with.

Amber: And this very small book taught me that what’s going on between these two ears, the six inches of real estate, is literally the most important thing that you can manage in your life.

Gil: Yeah. That’s a good one. I, I love reading mindset books, actually. I love listening to all mindset books. I, I, yeah, I, I found out that after consuming so many books, that there are books that I like to, and our, our listeners probably know this, but there are books that I like to listen on Audible. There are books that I like on Kindle, and then there are books that I need the tactical, like flip back to this page type of book.

Gil: So like,

Amber: Highlight color circle, dog Ear.

Gil: yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Amber: I think like my, my, um, my, like beach reads are on my Kindle, and then I like listening to, um, autobiographies. Especially if the auth, the author is, yeah, that’s, you have to listen to that. Um, comedy books, that sort of thing. But like tactical books, I need a book.

Gil: yeah, yeah. You always want like, oh, where was that reference? And like that tactical, like knowing where in the book and what kind of, where it is, like that is something that like Kindle cannot replace. It’s not a leisurely read type of thing.

Amber: right.

Gil: awesome. Second question, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

Amber: So, um, I’m going to borrow from Walt Whitman, and I’m going to say be curious, not judgmental. Um, so when you’re starting something new, don’t, don’t judge yourself. Don’t say like, oh, I’m not enough for this, or, I don’t know enough about this, or, I’m not gonna be successful. Who am I to do this? Or, um, even just like those preliminary, what if I screw up?

Amber: Or, you know, just being overwhelmed with where to begin. And I want you to start asking, what am I learning? Um, you’ll hear me say, fail forward and turn your losses into lessons. Um, I mean, if I’m being honest, I don’t, I’m about to find out how much money I lost in 20. Well, no, not last year. The year before, um, it wasn’t pretty.

Amber: I had a big hip surgery and, and also just did some different things in my business. And you know what? It was a really expensive lesson and it was new. I’m so grateful. I don’t even care how much money I lost, the lessons that I got from that expensive PhD I got and that the stupid tax I paid has set me up to do what I’m loving right now.

Amber: I’ve never been more excited about my business in 13 years than I am right now. And so if I had to pay and if I had to, I did this new thing and I got curious, how do I do this? Who do I talk to about that? And I didn’t judge myself. I was just like, well, in the end, that’s not exactly how I wanted it to go.

Amber: So like, we’re just going to sunset that and we’re gonna focus on this now.

Gil: I think that that’s such a,

Amber: you,

Gil: yeah, I think that that’s such a really important topic. And unfortunately we end up learning this pretty much in the middle of our life, uh, where it’s, it’s really sad and I, I don’t know if there’s a hack to learn this earlier, but

Amber: Talk to your kids about it as early as possible,

Gil: maybe. Maybe. Yeah. And perhaps like I didn’t have parents.

Gil: To help guide me in kind of the identity finding thing, but I’m finding out now in, in my forties, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just put it out there, um, that a lot of folks now are trying to figure out like, is my life worthwhile? Like, not is my time put in all the right places? Am I really getting a lot of value out of this?

Gil: And I get really encouraged when I see an entrepreneur that’s sleeping and trying something new. And it’s not necessarily like, are they gonna succeed or fail in that one venture there? But having gone through that entrepreneurial journey back in 23 and 24, I’ve grown so much. I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I cared about, how I wanna present to myself, where I wanna stretch myself, where I want to put longer hours and where I don’t, and like. 24 was also like one of those years where I invested a ton of money into building crafted days. But at the same time, I grew a lot as a person myself. I started a podcast, I started a company, I started hiring people, I incorporated a company. We got revenue. Like, we went through all these different things where now like if I wanted to start a second company, it’d be very, not necessarily easy, but not this big looming thing.

Gil: And it also,

Amber: Yeah. I hate to tell you this, but it’s addictive. This will not be your only company. It’s like tattoos.

Gil: Yeah, I, I, I, I believe it. And it’s, it’s just like buying your first property there, like the first property that you buy and you host. And that’s like the most difficult part. And I, and I think like over time I’ll figure out like what are the types of projects that I want to kind of gravitate towards, but it doesn’t matter what company I end up building next.

Gil: Like, I also wanna make sure like. I have, I carve out time for my kids. Like, that is, like for me. I’m on the, I’m on the executive board of the PTA and I deliberately did that because I knew that if I was starting a company, it was gonna pull me and as much as I would let it, but me being on the PTA kind of helps me dedicate time to the school and where my kids are spending all their days in.

Gil: And so, like, it doesn’t, again, like, it doesn’t matter what company I build, I learned a lot about like, what’s important to me. So like, I’m so glad that you brought that up. And I’m, and I’m starting to see that more and more, maybe just because I’m just more 10 attentive to it now.

Amber: Oh, it’s definitely our age. I mean, when you get to mid age, you’re like, okay, well how much runway do I have left and have I set myself up for like, I don’t have to do those things anymore. We’re at a point in our careers where we don’t have to like. Do this because we need to get there. Like we’re, we’re kind of, you know, where we want to be.

Amber: And so now with that authority you can say like, okay, what do I need to let go of and like, talk about right now? Whew. We are at the tail end of the year of the snake. We are shedding, we shed all last year and we’ve got about a month or so left before we turn to the year of the fire horse. Um, so I told y’all I’m weird.

Amber: Um, these are the things that that go through my mind. Like you’ve gotta let go of that first part of your life, your beliefs, the things that hold you back, the relationships that are not for you, the things that weigh you down so that you can move and start adding things back, right? So that’s, I mean, that’s why I do my annual process every year of five things to let go of and five things to add to in order to have a successful year.

Amber: Um, you said something, oh, and I, maybe I just said this, I, I, I don’t know, I had like two competing ideas in my head and I have a DHD, so forgive me, but. The one thing that I have routinely said is that entrepreneurism is the number one personal development program in the history of of life. Because when, until you know, what it feels like to make payroll, like you don’t, you don’t know what stress is.

Amber: And when you have other people who are dependent on you, or you have guests who are, um, who their entire year revolves around this one week and you’re responsible for it like that, that really forces your brain into a different mode. And so I think that’s why I’m so passionate about personal brands is be like, you, like immediately you’re like, my fatherhood’s important to me.

Amber: I I really wanna be a good husband. Like, you know, my health is important to me. I’m like, you are for me. Because when we’re talking about branding, those things can’t go away. If you’re going to make a brand that like negates the fact that you have a family or anybody on your team has a family and you’re just driving hard and you’re not like cve, that like some people might have to, like, that’s part of your employer brand, right?

Amber: Some people might have to take the day because their kid is sick and they gotta take ’em to the doctor. Like, if you don’t have that baked into your culture or how you do business, that’s gonna impact the guest experience because you have no, you have no plan B. I mean, I could just go on and on and on about it

Gil: Yeah, I love that. Awesome. And maybe that kind might lead to our last question. What’s one tactical takeaway that you would give to someone that’s either trying to get started in direct bookings or trying to amplify their direct bookings? We gave ’em a lot of things to think about, a lot of strategy and maybe some tactics, but what’s like one piece of advice that you would give to them that they can start to put into practice today?

Amber: if you can. And, and you might have to help me with this, but if, if there’s a way to communicate with people who have repeatedly booked with you or maybe just someone that you had an amazing experience with, um, through whatever OTA, or maybe you’re just have like a baby direct booking site, um, but you have some guests pick your five favorite, your three favorite, the five people that you’re like, man, it was such a great experience to do business with them.

Amber: Send ’em a message and say like, Hey, I’m working on my brand and if I could have a hundred guests just like you, I would be the happiest property manager on the planet. Can you commit 15 minutes to me to ask a couple of questions? Most of the time people are super, look me, me, I’m your favorite. Of course, they’re gonna wanna talk to you.

Amber: And so you just set up, you know, five questions that are really meaningful that will help you better understand your ideal guest. And so, and if that’s not, if you don’t have that, then think about like maybe five, five different people in your life that you’re like, oh man, if my guests were like these people, and start looking for the common threads in them.

Amber: Like, do they have similar beliefs about life? Do they live in a particular area? Is it that they all have kids or maybe they’re all, um, it’s a bunch of like girls trips or like in Nashville. Oh my gosh. I mean, it’s, it is the, um, the bachelorette capital of America and it’s second in the world next to Tokyo.

Amber: So like, obviously you should be targeting bachelorette parties for, for that. So pick five people, deep dive as, as much as you can, like, don’t overwhelm them, but you pick five juicy questions that will lead them into some storytelling. And, and then like, there’s your data. Now build a site, build a direct booking site that speaks to that persona.

Amber: Don’t wing it.

Gil: Yeah, and I, I would encourage folks, like even though on crafted days, we provide you with. Beautiful templates and placeholder text there. Please don’t leave the placeholder text that we provide you.

Amber: Don’t leave the placeholder

Gil: it’s meant, and, and if you do, it’s, it’s gonna be very generic because like you’re meant to put in what resonates with your ideal guest there.

Gil: So, yeah. Yeah.

Amber: we have time for me to add just one little thing? Okay. So when I wrote my book, the Bombshell Businesswoman, how to Become a Bold, brave Female Entrepreneur, um, first of all, obviously I work with you, so don’t work exclusively with women, but it was something I felt led to do and because I spoke so directly, ’cause I knew exactly who I was talking to.

Amber: I called her Ann, she lived in Franklin. She had two kids. She was president of the chamber. She had a hair salon. She had 12 employees. Like I could tell you everything about this woman, all of her insecurities, everything. When I wrote that book, I got letters in the mail, I got dms, I got emails. I got carrier pigeon, I got gifts in the mail and they all said the same thing.

Amber: It’s like you were talking directly to me. I had a retired military officer send me an email saying like, my wife had this on the coffee table. And I picked it up in thumbing through it when I got to chapter so-and-so. It’s like you were talking directly to me and I was like, are you a bombshell, Bob? So when you’re talking to your people, like with that amount of emotional connection and clarity, ’cause you’ve talked to your five favorite and you’ve made, you’ve removed the text that Gill and his team have put there and you put text in there that speaks to the hearts of those people.

Amber: You’re gonna have loyalty. You’re gonna have people who are sending you gifts and saying like, this is the greatest vacation or trip or whatever ever. Because you’re hitting them in the heart, not just in the head.

Gil: I love that. I think that’s a great way to end the show. Amber, it’s been a huge pleasure to have you on the show, and I look forward to building upon our relationship this entire year. So I’m very grateful for every, for everything that you’ve provided so far.

Amber: Well, I’m so grateful to be on your show and I am, as you know, I’m tickled pink. ’cause the potential that your company has is extraordinary. And, um, just to nerd out and be on the ride with you is, is going to be really exciting.

Gil: I, I, I, for our listeners here, I do nerd out with Amber quite often where I, I am not afraid to nerd out and some folks from the show know this, but. I, I don’t mind getting technical and, and, and just sharing that it’s kind of to, that, it’s like it’s part of my brand as well too.

Amber: Yeah. Everybody thinks I’m like this Glamazon and I’m like, I’m a, I’m a nerd. I mean like, I’m a hardcore nerd. Everybody needs to know that

Gil: Awesome. Until next time, Amber. Talk to you later. .