Data-Driven Success: Crafting the Ideal Short-Term Rental Strategy with Taylor Jones

Summary and Highlights

This conversation between Gil and Taylor (Mr. Jones), an experienced STR investor and data analyst, covers a wide range of topics in the STR industry. They discuss the evolution of the market, strategies for success, and the importance of data-driven decision-making. The podcast highlights the shift from simply acquiring properties to strategically developing and marketing STRs to stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Key Highlights:

1. Market Evolution: The STR market has evolved from 2020-2024, with 2024 being described as the year where “cream rises to the top,” emphasizing the need for strategic thinking and differentiation.
2. Data-Driven Approach: Mr. Jones emphasizes the importance of using data for property acquisition, design, and marketing decisions. His background in baseball statistics informs his analytical approach to STRs.
3. Ideal Guest Avatar: Both stress the critical importance of understanding the target guest for specific markets and locations, as it affects everything from property acquisition to design and marketing.
4. Creating a Moat: They discuss the importance of having unique features that competitors can’t easily replicate, such as views, large lots for amenities, or purpose-built STR designs.
5. Efficient Design: Mr. Jones advocates for creating efficient floor plans that maximize bedroom count while minimizing overall square footage, focusing on common areas and essential amenities.
6. Amenities: They agree that amenities should be strategically chosen based on the target market and location, with a focus on creating memorable experiences in common areas.
7. Photography and Marketing: They discuss the trend of using models in property photos to better represent the ideal guest experience, noting the challenges and potential business opportunities in this area.
8. Direct Booking Strategies: They cover various approaches to encourage direct bookings, from simple methods like collecting guest emails and using QR codes, to more advanced strategies like influencer collaborations.
9. Adapting to Market Changes: Gil shares how adding unique amenities to his Smoky Mountains property helped maintain competitiveness as the market changed.
10. Technology in STRs: Gil discusses his company, Practice Days, which aims to simplify the creation of direct booking websites for STR operators.
11. Background Diversity: They note the diverse backgrounds of people entering the STR industry and how previous experiences can be leveraged for success.
12. Continuous Improvement: Both agree on the importance of starting with basic strategies and gradually improving and expanding, rather than trying to implement complex systems from the start.

Overall, the conversation paints a picture of an evolving industry where success increasingly depends on strategic thinking, data analysis, and a deep understanding of target markets and guests. It highlights the shift from a period of easy growth to one where differentiation and efficient operations are key to thriving in the competitive STR landscape.

Transcription

Taylor: I understand exactly who your ideal booking client is upfront because acquisition is going to lead everything downstream. If you acquire the wrong property in the wrong market at the wrong price, if you set it up wrong, design it well, it doesn’t matter if you’re the president of, you know, the four seasons resort, you can’t out operate a bad starting block.

So really understand exactly who your target demographic is upfront. And then you’ll be able to collect significant wins above your competition every step of the way downstream from buying the right property, setting it up correctly, designing it correctly, and then lastly marketing it correctly. And if you mess up up front, it becomes significantly harder to kind of catch up downstream.

So to me, I know I live at the front of the funnel in data and acquisitions, but It’s truly, I think, one of the most impactful starting points and SKUs of this asset class.

Gil: Hey folks, welcome back to Direct Booking Simplified, where we break down the strategies and tactics to win in direct bookings. On today’s show, I have Taylor on actually our unique collaboration podcast. He has a podcast of his own. Welcome Taylor. 

Taylor: Thank you, Gil. Appreciate it. So Gil, tell me a little bit more about, you know, your background, how you got into the space and what you do.

Gil: Yeah, so I’m a short term rental operator myself. My wife and I, we have a couple cabins here, actually not here, but in the Smoky Mountains and in Branson, Missouri. We’re located on the West Coast in San Francisco. Um, I come from a technology background. So I’ve been a product director for the last 15 years for some pretty big brands, um, pretty big tech companies.

Um, and now more recently, I went into entrepreneurship. So we ended, I ended up leaving my W two in tech and starting my own, my own startup basically. So the company name is practice days. We basically make it super easy for anyone to get into direct bookings. We connect into all the different PMSs. We pull in all the property information and we allow you to build a really beautiful, really high converting direct booking site in less than a day.

It’s amazing. 

Taylor: Cannot emphasize this enough. Gil showed me live how easy it was to build and you’ve heard the horror stories. Oh, I gotta get build this on WordPress and it takes forever. It is truly same day, uh, you know, dumb it down to a fifth grader can handle it. It’s absolutely incredible what they’ve built from a simplicity standpoint.

And if you’ve been on the edge or thinking it’s overwhelming, um, this is a great option to seriously consider. 

Gil: Yeah, yeah. And hopefully I think we have you doing doing your onboarding pretty soon. So I’m excited about that. Um, I actually asked you not to onboard last week because we’re doing our rollout.

Um, and that went really well. Actually, um, we did our big rollout. Last Friday. It’s it’s really actually our third generation of our platform. I made the first version, the really crappy version. I’m not an engineer, but I ended up coding the first version just to demo it out and see if, like, if this is worthwhile to get into.

Um, and it did his purpose. And then I end up hiring engineers to bring, um, to actually create our like first production version. And we’ve been rolling on that. That’s for the, like the first eight months out of the year. And we started working with like really big hosts that had 40 to 80 properties. And that first version was just too rigid.

It didn’t allow you to drag and drop things. It just didn’t work as well. So I was like, Taylor, hold on, don’t sign up yet. Starting Friday, we’re going to launch our new version. And oh my God, it’s so amazing. We’re at the Poconos conference on Friday. And, um, we were having this VIP dinner and I actually had Bill Faith was there, Justin Ford from Breezeway was there, a lot of like big names, Guesty was there as well too.

And we were doing all of our intros and I was like, I’m creating the Shopify for short term rentals. Um, and that’s a line right there. Yeah, I didn’t think much of it. I mean, that’s like coming from e commerce, like that’s how I think about it. And then just an afterwards after dinner, he pulled me aside like, Hey, Gil, like out of all the intros, like I didn’t remember any of it, but I did remember the Shopify for short term rentals.

Like, what are you talking about? Uh, and I was like, well, I can show you. Um, and I whipped out my, I had my laptop with me because I didn’t, I don’t leave my laptop behind if I’m, if I’m anywhere with it. Um, and I whipped it out and I, I basically gave him a demo of the new version that we launched that launched that morning.

He’s like, Oh my God, this is amazing. Um, so that was a, that was a big highlight of the show and like even build it like a, a name drop during the keynote on it. So, um, I’m super stoked of like what we’ve built, we’ve learned and like what we’re going to take the, like the platform. So. Yeah, it’s been a really, really fun ride.

I 

Taylor: can’t wait to see the new version. I know you put the, uh, put the brakes on trying to get V2, so I’m excited to see V3 here, uh, in action. 

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it’s gonna get better. Um, so like, Taylor, when you get onboarded, and I do this with all of my customers, like, as part of the onboarding flow, I actually have a, uh, a a Calendly invite on there where I get to sit down and actually walk through the implementation with you.

It’s pretty easy, but that gives me a chance to talk to all of my customers. I still onboard every single one of my customers myself because for me, I’m, I’m a product guy and I can not create, I cannot continue to create a better product every single month. If I’m not consistently having a good pulse on how our customers are using it, what problems are they trying to solve?

So When you on board, if you need help, you can, you can book a calendar invite with me. You can skip it, but hopefully, like, if you, if you take advantage of it, we can have more face time together. But yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a lot of fun. That’s great. It’s been a lot of fun too.

Taylor: Or that attention to detail, still being in the weeds, uh, you know, at that point. Inflection point. I’m sure, you know, with scale that that isn’t as sustainable, but being able to keep that that pulse close to the business, I think it’s super critical for a lot of founders, especially as you grow, you get too far away from where your core customer is.

You lose track and you start working on things that maybe are in your head, but aren’t in your customers heads. And, you know, the business kind of drifts away there. You see people who have early successes and then it kind of the business just starts tailing or going flat. And I think it’s kind of that inflection point of like, You just kind of got out of the weeds too soon.

And it’s really awesome that you’re still doing that to be super dialed in with what the customer truly wants and appreciates from a success standpoint. 

Gil: Yeah. I mean, you’ll find this a lot of in startups, like a lot of founder led, a lot of product led companies, if they’ve done product in the past, and that’s kind of how they think about things.

They’ll continue to do it forever. Like Jack Dorsey, when he started Twitter, like he was still in the, he has still had a day that he only paid attention to, to product. And so like, I don’t think that I’ll ever like step away from doing that. And hopefully we don’t get to a size where I don’t get to talk to customers anymore, because that would be a very sad day if I don’t get to talk to our customers.

Um, but hopefully I have a team to help me like leverage time and to make sure that I can give every everybody attention. But like, I do think that like knowing your business is very important and that that rolls into like, Our STR business, like I still am until it may be evolved. And I probably am at a stage where I should be getting VAs for some of my operations, just so that I can buy myself a little bit more time.

But at the end of it, I actually enjoy hosting. Like, it’s actually a fun thing to do, to be able to see like people message you and had a great stay. Um, that being said, I could leverage my time more effectively, but I just love it. 

Taylor: Yeah, no, that, uh, that’s definitely part of the game. People get into it. You start realizing, um, there’s, there’s something about it.

I can’t describe it to people. You know, I used to be a bartender server. So it’s kind of my first breath of customer service, which is, you know, kind of a form of hospitality that I just didn’t really know back then. And yeah, there’s just something about when you set up a space, you have a vision, I’m going to buy this property, turn it into something great, and then it actually comes to fruition and somebody messages you, Hey, my family, uh, me and my spouse, whatever that, that is, you just can’t describe that feeling when it came to fruition and you nailed it and you get that positive feedback and it’s come full loop.

So yeah, without being a host, it’s really hard to tell people, but you know, that feeling is, is great to have, whether you’re a year into the game or 10 years into the game. 

Gil: Yeah, and it’s not for everybody. I would say like there are like a fair amount of people that get into hosting and they actually don’t enjoy it and they realize that they don’t enjoy it and they rather focus on scaling out their teams and that’s not a bad way to do it.

But like if you I’m always a big proponent of like, Doing what gives you energy. So, like, if there’s certain parts of your business that still gives you energy, find some way to do a little bit of it, because, like, I would say, like, outside of time, your energy is probably, like, the next scarcest resource that you have.

It’s probably actually not scarce. You could probably build it up. Um, but it’s one of those things that keep you going. 

Taylor: Yeah, no, it truly is. And there’s so many different SKUs of this business when being a host and, you know, whether it’s on the acquisition side, whether it’s in the setup and design side, whether it’s in the true operations, and you’re not going to love every SKU of this business the same.

You’re going to be better at some than others. Yeah. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses. I think it’s critical for this business or any business and, and double down and focus your efforts and time on those things that you do well and succeed at. 

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. So Taylor, you know a little bit about me.

Do you mind giving our audience a brief introduction on, on kind of what you do? 

Taylor: Yeah, certainly, certainly. So I am, uh, uh, a washed up baseball guy, uh, been in sales forever, COVID hits, and that was kind of my aha moment. Um, I had a client facing sales job at the time. And so all of a sudden, March of 2020, not allowed to go see people face to face anymore.

And, um, the time that I had was really the blessing in disguise. Always had an itch for real estate. Just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So I did everything from, you know, read bigger pockets, consume YouTube content. I looked at, you know, burr flipping multifamily, uh, wholesaling, uh, everything in between and naturally came across short term Reynolds.

And me and my wife, we’ve been consumers of Airbnb since 2015. We’ve stayed in 26 different Airbnbs across the world. So it wasn’t that Airbnb was new. I just never looked at it from being on the host side of the table. I’d only looked at it from a guest. Now, if only I had explored being a host back in 2015, Oh boy, man, this would be a different conversation, but, um, started diving in and realized, Oh my gosh, this is great.

And as a lifelong Florida boy, I of course was like, well, let’s go buy a cabin in the mountains because I need something different than what I have here. So we wrote five offers, me and my wife, uh, fifth one got accepted. We ended up buying a cabin in blue Ridge, Georgia. It’s the closest mountain range you can drive to as a Floridian.

So naturally half your bookings are Floridians. The other half are people from Atlanta an hour and a half away. I remember I’m sitting there, it’s a Tuesday night. I launched this first Airbnb in blue Ridge with me and the wife. And I woke up going to work the next morning. Sales job came back naturally.

And I woke up to five bookings for over 8, 000. And that’s where I was instantly addicted. 

Gil: Oh 

Taylor: my 

Gil: God. 

Taylor: So that, that whole buy one a year for, for the next decade, that went out the window and I was immediately like, okay, I need another one of these. And, you know, four months later. We got a chance to buy an off market, um, another cabin in Blue Ridge, of course, took advantage, bought that one.

And I was really off to the races at that point, but that was kind of that first, um, you know, Hey, this is really what I want to do. And I think. All my previous endeavors, whether it was bartending and serving, um, you know, through college that kind of gave you those skills of talking to people and understanding their needs, which translates over.

Um, I think my sales background and being able to, you know, again, talk to people in a face to face sales job, all those kind of led to. You know what I’m now truly passionate about and that is real estate and in particular short term rentals and hospitality. And of course, would never want to leave this asset class.

So, yeah, I think when you find what you like and are good at, you know, it truly is that aha moment. 

Gil: Yeah, you’re absolutely right on that. So, like, I. I was a bigger pockets, like, listener as well. So I probably listened to like two, 300 episodes. Uh, I, I still remember I was trying to convince my wife to get into real estate investing and she didn’t want anything to do with it.

And I was like, I’m, and if you listen to their podcast, like you get this itch and you want to like take action on it. Um, and the next thing you have to do is like in order for you to take action, especially if you’re married or if you’re married, you got to get the blessing on the other side. And I remember I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles for like a road trip with my wife.

And I was like, Okay, this is the time I’m going to put on bigger pockets. I’m going to have her listen to it because she would not listen to any other way. And I was like, she’s trapped in this car for the next five hours. That’s a good way to have her absorb it. So that’s how I got her like comfortable.

And we did, we purchased our longterm in Indy Indianapolis. Um, but I was thinking about like, Um, and I did that first one. I was like, this is not really doing it for me. Um, and I just like stopped investing like for the next year and that that’s when actually like COVID hit. So like my priorities got all like shifted upside down.

Um, and then the following year, that’s when I got my first STR. And it was like, this is like what I wanted to do. So like, absolutely. If you find what you really want and like, I don’t, I don’t think all investing asset class is like, it’s available or is right for everybody. Like, there’s different risk tolerances, different involvement levels, like, but find the one that like, again, gives you energy.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, you see what people like and want. And I think it’s like stage of life as well. And whether it is industrial self storage, multifamily, um, you know, wholesaling, flipping, brokering. I mean, I’ve even seen great, you know, realtors and they are just addicted to the game. They love buying and selling houses with people.

And I’m always like, man, you come across some great deal flow. Why don’t you ever just buy some of these and keep them? They’re like, I just don’t want to, I just want to do transactions. And so If that’s what your passion is, I always say, just double down on it. And I think you nailed it with energy and time being two of your most precious resources.

Once you find that thing you like and are good at, just go double, triple down on that and try to get rid of everything else that ultimately is a distraction. 

Gil: Yeah. I mean, you can make money anywhere and everywhere. Like there’s no shortages and obviously like, yes, different asset classes have different like timeframes and how much clash flow and appreciation that you can get out of it.

And there’s definitely a mixture there, but. You’re in it for the long run. Like what, what are you going to, what do you see yourself continue to do? Like 10 years from now, 20 years from now? Um, like if I continue to be a host and our portfolio is X times bigger, I’m happy with that. I don’t mind that at all.

Yeah. No, you take it. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what are you at now? How many properties do you have? 

Taylor: Well, I’ve been repivoting lately. So, um, I’ve been very fortunate to be blessed with some of the best data access, uh, in this asset class. So, um, you know, joining a couple of the different groups, um, that, that we can dive into, um, I’ve got some of the best data access.

So I’m looking at deals across the country on a daily basis. I’m underwriting a hundred, 125 deals a day. So what a lot of us are doing is buying existing products and trying to turn it into what we believe the best. Short term rental is, and I’m kind of at the stage of life where I think I can roll the dice.

Well, why don’t I just build the perfect short term rental? I have all this data. I can go into any market and say, okay, what’s the best thing to buy? What amenities? What design? What style? What does it need to look at? And yeah. I feel like I got to take the swing and you know, development’s high risk, high reward.

I’ve been on this journey for about a year now. Um, so I’ve had to kind of liquidate some of my portfolio for cash cause it’s also not for the faint of heart. It is not a something cheap to do. So I’ve been, I’ve been selling down over the last year, year and a half to accumulate cash to pursue development.

And you know, my thought is if it works, I’ll probably never buy again. If I can continue to just build these. Perfect short term rentals and strategic markets, uh, and strategic locations. I’ll just rebuild, you know, our portfolio that way. If it fails and blows up in my face, I can always go back to buying existing products, you know, really what I’m, I’m good at and have done the last four years anyway.

So to me, um, it’s kind of that time of life and I wouldn’t want to regret it five, 10 years from now being like, man, I didn’t take that chance. You know, kids get down the rabbit hole and all of a sudden I’m like, what if could have been, and to me, this is kind of that opportune time. So. Yeah, on a personal note, I’ve been peeling back and exiting some properties in the last 12, 18 months to save up and I’ve had 2 plats under contract fell out during due diligence for various reasons.

Um, so I’m still swinging. I’m on a couple plots right now that I’m doing doing work on. So hopefully the next 1 to 3 weeks, I’ll have offers out and get something under contract to get going. 

Gil: Very nice without, I don’t know if you have any like secret sauce or things that you keep kind of close to your chest, but like when you’re looking for new plots or basically a new build, new development, what do you, what do you look for?

What’s your criteria? 

Taylor: Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely gonna be market specific, but the very first thing is the actual floor plan itself. Um, you know, all of these products and homes that people are buying, they were never perfect strategic floor plans. And this might sound counterintuitive to people, but I want to build the smallest, most efficient short term rental possible now, not necessarily a one bed, like small, like total square feet, but I want to build the smallest five bed, six bed, seven bed possible, because with development, you do literally pay for every square foot you build.

And the thing on the buy side of your, if everything’s priced at appraisal value price per square foot, you are paying for it. And that’s why a five bed that’s 2000 square feet in a market versus a five bed that’s 3000, That extra thousand feet isn’t really giving you so much more additional revenue. If the master bedroom is oversized, it has a ton of excess space.

So I’ve kind of mastered and worked with an architect to build these perfect, efficient floor plans where within the bedrooms, we’re just talking room for a bed, two nightstands and a walkway. You don’t need the excess space. People are there to sleep. They’re not there to lounge and hang out and, you know, efficient kitchens, bathrooms, no oversized walk in closets, things that aren’t necessary to make a short term role.

Great. So when you go into these markets, it’s like, okay, I want to have this optimized, perfect floor plan. And then how I amenitize and go about it. Will be market specific and and this floor plan, it’s got a movie theater built in a game room built in, which are going to be kind of universal, you know, trucks, especially if I’m built a 5, 6 or 7, any of these markets.

And then I’ve got a flex option on a swimming pool, no swimming pool. And then if it is swimming pool, can it be an indoor outdoor hybrid, you know, pull the, pull the glass rail up, uh, you know, type of thing, just, you know, when you really look at differentiating, if you’re going into a market, uh, especially one that has a winter climate and you have indoor pool, movie theater, game room, perfect efficiency, perfect design, and then exterior amenities to wrap it up.

Nobody’s gonna be able to contend with you because that product doesn’t exist today. So, you know, you’d have a minimum 12 to 18 month head start on anybody who tried to try to copy or clone you. And I wish them the best of luck if you give me that much lead time on anybody. So to me, it’s just looking at where the best opportune time is to build at a good price.

But also get that, you know, output because building costs different in every market. So what’s my going in basis versus my revenue output for a five, six or seven bedroom. And so that’s to me when I’m considering markets, I’m looking at, well, who has tons of revenue being generated in these five, six and seven budget markets.

Then from there, where’s land cheapest? Because if I can buy land for 50, 000 an acre versus 250, 000 an acre, well, that’s going to change my basis. And I would need that revenue to make up for it on the back end to make it make sense. 

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. That’s super, that’s super smart. Like, so as you’re thinking about, like you, you said something very interesting about efficient bedroom counts and so on.

Do you think about different bedroom sizes? Like for instance, like, do you plan to have a master suite that’s a little bit bigger for the person that’s booking or do you plan to make them as efficient as possible and kind of keep it tight and kind of push, push folks more towards the common living space where you kind of spend most of your time during SDR or yeah.

How do you think about that? 

Taylor: Yeah, definitely still have one of those. I mean, if somebody’s stroking the check for 1000 a night, 2000 a night for these big boys, you still want to give them some of those pleasures. Uh, definitely the bathroom there will be bigger, more oversized. Uh, and some of those things that, you know, the person booking will have, you know, we’ll have some on suites mixed in as well.

Um, I’ve seen some people with the strategy saying, Hey, every bedroom gets an on suite. Thank you. I don’t disagree with that in some markets that can work. Um, I also think that’s added square footage and added costs that might not give you the highest ROI. So definitely marketing data specific, but you know, ideally I’m probably looking at something like a five, three, six, three and a half type of spread where, you know, you’re going to bang one or two, and then you’re going to have the rest of those just being shared spaces.

So it just needs to make just enough financial sense because again, every additional bathroom is an additional cost that you just have to weigh, you And realistically, if you’re sitting at a six, four versus a six, six. You know, are people realistically going to pay more for those extra two bathrooms? 99 out of 100 times the answer is no, it’s what else is there that game room, that movie theater, that indoor pool, that location, that’s going to carry you way more than those two additional bathrooms.

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely, I feel that too. Like one of our places are maybe the newest acquisition. It’s a five, five, five, four. So pretty much every bedroom has it on suite. And I’m like, this is kind of a lot of bathroom. That’s a lot of maintenance to, um, it’s a lot of plumbing. It’s a lot of, it’s a lot of everything.

Um, whereas I, I feel like some of those rooms, like you just don’t need a bathroom alongside every bedroom. It’s a nice amenity, but I actually, I agree with you that I would much rather have that space for a bigger game room, a theater room, and some of the places where like, again, like most people, they don’t spend all that much time in the bathroom.

They’re spending it. In the living room. They’re spending it on the decks. They’re spending it on the fire pit. Those are, those are where, like, when you think about like STRs and you’re doing a lot of design, you’re thinking about moments. Like, what are the moments that you want to create? I don’t want to create that many moments in the bathroom.

Like, that’s not where I want to be spending our, our time and energy. 

Taylor: Bingo. Yeah, you know that we always classify things from a data and acquisition standpoint, which is, you know, where, where my background and core is, is nice to have and must haves nice to have, you know, on suites and every, it’s just not a must have in almost every market.

Same thing, even if you’re acquiring. So say you’re not building and you’re, you’re, you know, acquiring short term rentals or existing properties when you’ve got the nice beams in the living room per se, Okay. Those are nice to have, but never must have. It’s not like, oh, I’m going to go install those like cedar beams in there.

But if you happen to buy something, it’s at the right price. You’re not overpaying because it has, you know, quote unquote beams in the living room. Great. You’re not going to tear it out. So that’s what I say. It’s nice to have, but it’s not a must have. And so that’s how you really have to look at everything and where people make bad decisions.

Is you spend dollars renovating a short term rental property or overpaying for things that are nice to have versus must haves. And that’s where from a data and acquisition standpoint, we stay laser focused on true to the numbers. You know, me being a wash up baseball guy. Um, numbers are everything.

There’s no emotion in baseball. Your RBIs are your RBIs. And I’ve taken that same approach here in this asset class. What does the data tell us? What are my comps? What is my underwriting and stay very disciplined? Because when people kind of cloud the judgment with emotion, I’ve seen people just make bad decisions that cost them 10, 20, 50, or even a hundred thousand dollars, uh, in this, you know, in this space.

Gil: Yeah. You mentioned something very interesting just now about like. You being a washed up baseball guy in this specific, specific industry. I think a lot about like. Everybody comes from very, very different spaces. I talked about this quite a bit on our show, but our industry is very, very diverse. No one comes in here from no one, not no one, but like not, not everybody comes in from a real estate background.

We come in from nursing. I’ve seen people that come from the military. From sales from tech, it comes from everywhere, but like everybody comes in from a different place of strength and skill. And it’s interesting that like, even though like baseball is like completely not, well, kind of irrelevant towards SDRs, there is an element where you actually, that previous skill does apply to how you’re doing now.

And It seems like it’s actually probably one of your, your strong suits or your secret sauce now. 

Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I am underwriting a hundred, 125 deals a day. And so I’m constantly looking at numbers, spreadsheets, and some people are like, yeah, that sounds really freaking boring. Whereas in baseball, you’re constantly evaluating what’s RBIs?

How am I situationally? What are the numbers tell me to do here? If it’s two balls, one strike versus two balls, two strikes. It’s like. What are the statistics and everything’s just a number in an output. And when you’re looking at short term rentals and you’re underwriting deals, everything’s just a number in an output.

And so to me, this kind of is just like second nature. Um, you know, weirdly, I enjoy looking at it. I don’t stop, uh, people close to me know, you know, when, uh, I was out in Italy on my honeymoon with my wife for 10 days. I put four deals under contract in the States, uh, for, for other investors that, that we were helping.

So I’m always underwriting now, you know, maybe I wake up an hour, hour and a half before and bang the laptop out and go, go check the market, underwrite some deals, pull comps, uh, obviously was, you know, still, still pursuing, uh, the 10 days and enjoying Italy. But yeah, I mean, the ability to do like, I don’t ever turn it off, man.

It’s year round. The real estate market never closes. People are like, Oh yeah, you know, my, my nine to five, my 40 hour job. I’m like 40 hour week. What’s that? And you know, I’m always looking at real estate. I think that that what if it’s like, what if today there’s an amazing opportunity that hits the market?

I would always hate to like not look. And I think that’s that curiosity that’s driven me the last three years to, to underwrite hundreds and hundreds and thousands of deals. It’s also a honed in skill. It’s probably why I’m one of the best acquisition and underwriting specialists in this space is because You know, just the sheer amount of reps I’ve done hundreds and thousands.

And so once I understand a market from a data perspective, I can instantly look at a property and tell you yes, no, or maybe, and be pretty darn right. And, you know, 99 out of a hundred times, cause it’s just, it’s just repetition. I mean, just as, you know, from your tech background, you do anything over and over again, every day, you’re going to get really good at it.

And, you know, whether you’re a chef, uh, you know, hair salon or an acquisition short term rental underwriter, like you do, you do some a hundred thousand times, you’re going to get pretty darn good at it. 

Gil: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely agree. You mentioned, um, like your amenities, you’re putting a game room in there.

You’re putting maybe a theater room. You’re thinking about indoor pools. It reminds me of something that, uh, Kenny Bedwell was talking about at the Poconos conference. He was really, I don’t know if you, you follow him more recently, but he talks about like moats a lot and where if you design in the right place, have the right amenities are in the right locations, have nice nice design.

Those are actually really hard things to replicate. Like if you’re on the mountaintop in the Smoky Mountains, have gorgeous views. your neighbor down the mountain that has blocked views, they can’t compete. There’s nothing that they can really do. They can’t hire a designer and spruce it up and add that view in there.

Kind of like to, to your point, like if you have the space that is like actually carved out for SDRs, like you’re actually putting, building a huge, huge moat where any of your neighbors really can’t compete with you. So you almost, you Guaranteed to be on like the top one in 5%. 

Taylor: Yeah. And it’s having those things.

Nobody’s nobody’s building that type of asset. You know, it’s, again, it’s existing products. Um, you know, I like going into a lot of these markets where there isn’t a ton of new development, you know, the Smokies, there is a ton of new developments, you know, that hint, hint that is not the market I’m going into for anybody.

Um, but yeah, I like going into markets where there’s not a lot of other development because it’s gonna be hard for somebody to try to clone and do what I am. And yeah, I mean, we’ve, uh, you know, I’ve worked with clients where, uh, like to your point, uh, they’re like, Hey, we’re going to only acquire half acre lots.

Where we’re going to amenitize and fill it with things like pickleball courts, mini golf, sand volleyball courts, playgrounds, all these things. And you have a moat because your neighbor, he can’t expand his property line. He can’t take his 10th of an acre, quarter acre lot and just move the fence and open up more room for amenities.

So like, to your point, You buy those strategic moat assets and amenitize and design them properly. You have a moat just based on the property. You can’t pick the house up and move it up the mountain. You can’t take the lake, lake, you know, off lake house and put it on the lake. Like you get that right asset in the right spot and you design and amenitize it properly.

You’ve built yourself a moat. 

Gil: Yeah, yeah. So we are, we are in the smokies. Like our first one was, there’s no, there was no moat, uh, or I thought there was no moat and it was basically a four, three nice, nice size cabin. Um, and it did. All right. It actually did pretty good. It, it, it over exceeded our underwriting, but come second year.

We started to feel the effects of like Kobe being relieved and like people not traveling locally. They’re traveling abroad more. And I was like, how do you stay competitive? And I always had this like, really big, actually, relatively big in the smokies, like lawn in front of our cabin and no one has lawns in front of their cabins.

It’s not like, unless you’re in like the outskirts of the smoky mountains where you’re much further away, but we had this pretty sizable lawn. And what we ended up doing is we ended up putting a fire pit. And five putt putts in there and that’s not like Like, that’s not like really, really grand, but like, there’s not many people that has that much land that’s 10 minutes drivable to downtown Gatlinburg, like 

Taylor: in the Smokies.

That’s everything. Yeah. If you, if you don’t know that market, that is enough. Some of you might be like, oh, that’s easy. I can add that anywhere in the Smokies. That’s 

Gil: huge. Yeah, you’re on hills. Like, we’re in the valley. So I, I, I don’t, I don’t have views. But I have a big ass driveway, so a big driveway, um, and a lot of land.

So like that was the best thing that I could have done for it. And actually has performed better than it did last year, where like a lot of folks this year, they’re seeing like a 10, 15 percent compression against last year. I’m seeing quite the opposite where we’re at like 10. Probably 15 percent growth over the year over the last year.

So I’m, I’m pretty stoked about that. 

Taylor: Yeah. And I think it’s understanding and in that very first Blue Ridge one that we acquired, it was just a, you know, three bed, five minutes to downtown Blue Ridge, a wooden lot view. And yeah, sure. In 2020, 2021, every, all those were making money. As new supply, new interest came.

I was at least smart enough to realize, Hey, the writing’s on the wall. And I 1031 out of that, I didn’t have a differentiated product. Now, the second one we bought was top of the Ridge and according to my cleaner, the hot tub repair guy, one of the three best views in all of blue Ridge, Georgia, it was an Epic a hundred mile view, a gorgeous, uh, you know, property and, you know, we differentiated it and did really well.

Well, But, you know, in Blue Ridge, there’s far less of those views. And so having that was that differentiator that allowed that three bedroom to honestly perform at a 55 to 60, 000 revenue increase above the wooded lot. I was just smart enough not to hold, uh, you know, dead cards and you know, trade it out of that and, uh, you know, 1031 into a different asset in a different market You know, strategically now, everything I look at is I need an advantage of some way, shape, or form.

And I think a lot of elite investors are realizing you can’t buy something that doesn’t have a differentiated opportunity, or it’s just going to be super difficult to outoperate your competition. 

Gil: Yeah, it feels like the last two years, it’s been a lot about design and photography. I think we are entering a new wave where folks are thinking about, okay, as they scale up, can I actually add something that’s different?

Can I actually buy smarter? So I think that like we as investors are starting to look at these types of things much more than say previously. It’s getting a lot more competitive. So we’re constantly figuring out, like, how do we step it up a few notches? 

Taylor: Yeah, no creams rising to the top right now. That’s what I tell people.

And, uh, you know, everybody made money in 20 and 21, 22 was kind of the, uh, like, Oh my gosh, what’s going on? Uh, like it was right, right there at the end. I say 2023, the deck was reshuffling and 2024 creams rising to the top. That’s kind of the, how I look at the last five years and the theme of each year.

Gil: Yeah, absolutely. How do you think about the ideal guest avatar? And this is probably a softball because I know you think about this quite often, but like how do you think, how important is knowing your ideal guest avatar? 

Taylor: It is everything. And when we’re starting from a underwriting and acquisition standpoint, we need to understand who the heck goes to this market.

And when you acquire, you can’t just acquire for the asset, but you have to be forward thinking, how am I going to design this? How am I going to amenitize it for, you know, that ideal booking client. And that’s what you really need to understand up front, because if you just buy to buy and then be like, oh, well, I’ll just change it later on the design or amenities, like You could be stuck with something that you can’t turn into that great product, and so you have to have that vision up front.

And so looking at data, understanding, okay, who is traveling here? Why are they traveling here? What parts of town do they need to be in? All of these different things matter, and they’re gonna affect the type of house that you go after. You know, I’ll give you an example. Um, you know, really, really good example here.

So, if you’re going to invest in Scottsdale, Arizona, for example, you have old town, which is kind of downtown and then you have the northern suburbs. Those are 2 different booking clients. So, in downtown, it’s a lot of bachelorettes and groups of women. They want to be walkable. Go to all the bars. It’s one of the bachelorette meccas of the west coast.

Whereas up on the north side, those women, they don’t want to be 20 minutes away, but that’s where all the golf courses is, the dudes and bros, groups of friends, families. So the type of product you would pursue in Old Town versus North Scottsdale are completely different. You want the big half acre, high amenities lot in, you know, North Scottsdale.

You don’t care about that in Old Town because they’re not spending any time there. They’re out at the bars. They’re having a good time. You know, they’re just coming back and they’re done strategically. How you design. If you’re in old town, you probably want pink everywhere and groups of women and mirrors and different things to nail that.

But if you don’t have that mindset going in, you buy the wrong product, probably at the wrong price because you either overpaid, uh, you know, because you bought the wrong product and then you’re not designing it or amenitizing it correctly. It also affects how you market. To that those groups and hey, do I want bachelorettes to constantly booking my place?

Can I market to them on instagram? Can I, you know, retarget them? Can I capture their emails? And, you know, if 1 of them is getting married, well, strategically, the other 10 or 12 in that group might get married at some point. Well, great. If they had an awesome stay at my Scottsdale bachelorette, like, Let’s see if we can run it back with one of the other, you know, bridesmaids, like these are things that you have to take into consideration when you’re trying to build your book of business.

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so how important, like you touched on a very particular topic that I’m always very interested in is like around direct bookings. Like, how do you, do you drive people back to your Airbnb page? Are you, are you looking to drive more direct traffic? Uh, how do you convert some of those, some of those methods?

Yeah. 

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I think the starting out point is some of the simple things. So, you know, you don’t have to conquer the world right away, but start with simple things. Um, you know, things like state by capturing their email when they sign on to wifi QR codes scattered throughout the property. Hey, did you have a great time here?

Um, do you want to book directly? Once you start scaling, you have two, three, five, 10 properties. You can say, Hey, you know, if you enjoyed our time here, we have other properties, you know, even if it’s in the same market or different markets, you know, maybe they had a great time in Scottsdale, but you’re like, Hey, we also own some stuff in Florida.

And you know, you can push them to your own stuff and book direct. And then, you know, that’s kind of what I always say is like level one stuff. Real easy, real, uh, retargeting of past, of past guests. Next kind of level up is how can I appeal to new people? And those are things like, you know, Instagram and Facebook, uh, reels, you know, continuing to push and grow.

Um, you can have paid ads. So really just start with everything on that first level. And then you could start migrating up once you have the systems in place. I think too many people try to shoot for the stars and be like, I’m going to build this amazing direct booking strategy. It’s like, just go get Staphy, uh, you know, connect their, collect their emails, uh, off the wifi, put some QR codes in and get started there.

And then you could stack those wins up there just the same as, you know, your first Airbnb, like, you know, you don’t need 1800 amenities on the first one, you know, just continue to stack those wins and evolve as you grow into the space. 

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, some of the more advanced folks, like, as you think about, like, level one, level two, like, What are some of the things that you’ve seen really mature hosts really put into practice and got some good wins on?

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, things like influencer collabs or partnering with the right people. So it’s not just a influencer that has a huge following, but somebody strategic. So, um, I’ve seen where, hey, we’re in a family forward market. Somebody goes into, you know, one of the local, um, big metros and finds who’s the leader of the mom Facebook groups and reaches out, says, hey, we’d love to invite you out.

You and your family. They shoot a bunch of content. They promote it. You give, uh, you know, a giveaway of, hey, free stays. If you share this now, you get the virality. And it’s like, boom, that’s like an elite next level thing. I’ve seen instances like that where people are, you know, instantly driving five, 10, 15, 000 new followers, you know, just from doing the strategic collaboration, you’re also driving, you know, 10, 20, 50, 000 in direct bookings.

You know, straight from there. So I think the next level outside of just straight marketing is the influencer collaboration. And those are things I’ve seen, you know, really next level, uh, investors do well. And again, it’s not just anybody with a big following, but it needs to be something strategic that relates to what you do.

If you have a one, one couples getaway, you probably don’t want the leader of the mom’s Facebook group. That’s not your, your ideal booking client. And everything just goes back to understanding who you are. Who you are, what you are, what the, you know, ideal booking client is for this market and pursuing that with a very strategic mind for data every step of the way.

Gil: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Like, so we have a, like a resource guide on like an ebook on our, on our homepage. So if you go to like craftstates. co slash resources, there’s a guidebook there. The first thing we talk about before anyone gets into direct bookings, before they think about building out their site is really knowing your ideal guest avatar.

Because if you’re marketing to the wrong folks. Your, your headline’s wrong. Your portfolio doesn’t really match who you’re going after. And you’re actually going to the wrong channels. You’re not going to be successful on that. But if you get branding right, you get your ideal guest avatar right, you’re really speaking to who you’re actually trying to attract in there.

Those are the ones I see like really accelerating their like path towards direct bookings that higher rate there. And like, I see it over and over again, like the people that nail the brand aesthetics, who they’re talking to, the messaging that they’re using in their copy, the things that they put into their photos, for instance, like for instance, like me, I now tell our photographer.

Take out the pack and play, put out the high chair, put it at, by the dining table, because ours is family friendly stays. Like I want people specifically to have maybe two or more kids and their kids are in the range of like anywhere from one to six, that’s our sweet spot. Teenagers like that’s probably not like the, the, the best place for our places, but like, if you have really young kids, our stays are awesome.

And like, that’s who we know. And like, so like on our homepage, on our webpage, like we try to make it that headline in the very, very top kind of speaks to that. 

Taylor: Yeah. I, that’s such a great point. It’s description and, you know, talking to the right people and then you can even niche that down further is.

Don’t just leave the same title year round, you know, if you’re in Florida and it’s the winter and you have a pool heater because you know, Hey, strategically, this is going to be a way to differentiate from everybody else who just has a pool. The first thing in your title should be heated pool families.

Like you, you just go in, but you, you know, it’s understanding in July, that’s probably not the best title. Cause nobody’s like heated pool in July in Florida. That’s terrible. But if you’re not every step of the way. So I love that you even brought in Things as simple as the title, the description, having those buzzwords and key keywords that people can pick up on.

I’m seeing a huge shift to, you know, models and props in photography. I think that’s the new wave. Every top performer now is integrating props and models to fit. And again, it doesn’t have to be, you know, models like you might think, you know, it could be families, you know, models. Because that’s who you speak to.

Sure. If it’s a, you know, couples getaway, you have a, you know, a beautiful traditional models per se in that breath, but it’s nailing who you’re speaking to. Is it groups of friends? Is it dudes and bros? Well, that’s who your models need to be in the photos, you know, hanging out, doing what they’re doing.

And so I’m just seeing that more and more as people are trying to niche down into their target and speak to that right person. And those are the people getting outsized returns in this asset class. 

Gil: I agree with you. I agree with you. What I actually, you brought up a good point that I haven’t seen a good solution or haven’t seen someone be able to replicate it for others.

So I know a couple hosts that do really well, especially like in the Joshua tree folks, like they know what their ideal guest avatar is. They, and it’s usually like young couples going to Joshua tree. And. Almost every single top performer, they’ll have that hot tub picture where you see the back of the couple.

Um, but like, I’m a remote, I’m a remote host. Like for me, I definitely want to replicate and see if I can do that in some of my properties, but I haven’t been able to figure out, like, is there a good solution for me to, I have great photographer. But my photographer doesn’t have like a modeling service alongside of it, but like, it would be pretty cool, pretty good if someone’s out there in each of the top markets trying to figure out, like, is there models that we can be partnering up with, with our photographer or their own photographer and actually create some really good collateral.

This is. 

Taylor: Absolutely incredible. I think there is huge opportunity. It is hard. Like as somebody who has looked at doing it, especially, you know, couples are the easiest to find when you get into the family or groups of friends, it gets significantly harder because you would need at least four to six, you know, you can’t have two friends or two because then, you know, it looks like a couple, um, you know, that’s there.

So getting four to six people corralled Making sure it fits. If it is a family getting young kids mixed in, there’s definitely a niche there. Um, I think there’s a huge, anybody who’s an entrepreneur, uh, take this idea and run with it because you could partner with a lot of the best photographers in the short term rental markets, offer your services as a tag on, it creates a win win.

The photographer is getting more business. They have a partnership and pipeline to you. And then you’re obviously getting business, uh, you know, from the modeling side. I think it’s a huge opportunity. It is hard. I think it’s also why people who have models and nail it do really well, because it is hard to get that, especially with a lot of remote hosts across the country.

Gil: Yeah, it’s hard to replicate. It’s really hard to replicate. Yeah. Yeah. And definitely whoever starts that service. Definitely hit me up so I can, I can sign up and start using it. 

Taylor: Yeah. Call, call, call, call me and Gil, please. 

Gil: Yeah. Well, well, Taylor, it was a really good having you on the show. I usually end with two questions and you might have something else different, but, um, I usually end with two questions.

One is a mindset question and one’s a big takeaway question. Awesome. Uh, first one. What’s that one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new? 

Taylor: I tap into my baseball days. It’s what I know and I learned it from my dad. It’s better to strike out swinging than it is to strike out looking.

So so many people never take that chance. They never take that leap forward. Hey, I’m nervous about this. I’m scared. It really applies to every aspect of life. Um, you know, I mean, even, even, even pops teaching you, um, Hey, you know, you never know if that girl’s going to like you if you don’t talk to her, you know, so it’s better to strike out swinging worse where she says is no thanks, uh, then strike out looking and you could really apply that, that phrase to any aspect of life, business, entrepreneurship, uh, pursuing anything, a hobby.

And I just see so many people who get analysis paralysis. They get stuck, they get scared and they don’t step outside the comfort zone. And to me, some of the best decisions I’ve made in life were, uh, ones where other people thought I was crazy. Um, and I did take that swing and I’ve had some losses, you know, like anything I, um, you know, it, or I guess a better phrase is learning lessons.

Uh, it’s not wins and losses, it’s wins and learning lessons. So I’ve, I’ve had some learning lessons along the way, but I’ve had a lot of great successes because I took that action and took that swing. So from a mindset perspective, that’s the thing that, Has treated me really well and I would leave that with, uh, with your listeners.

Gil: Yeah, I, I definitely agree with you. And like the wins and losses actually, it’s actually, it’s actually not losses. Like I talked to my kids about this and my kids are pretty small, pretty, pretty young still, but like, they also have this fear of like failing or messing up or looking bad. But like, if they think about it as a learning lesson and I show them my failures.

I am very frank with like, like I do a lots of different projects and I tried them out and they just don’t work. So I just keep on trying it again and you get to a point like you kind of back to what you were saying earlier about the reps, like you may not be killer at it in the very beginning, but with enough practice, enough experience, you get better and better.

Like I have no doubt the next company that I end up starting. It’s going to be so much better, so much faster, uh, you just learn a lot. And I, I’ve been in product development for 15 years. And had I not gone in and started my own startup for the first time, like I would not have learned so much in just the past year, like I’ve learned more than I did in the previous five years in my director job.

Um, so like, I’m big on like, just go out there or learn, like use it as a learning experience, because like. It’ll make you such a stronger person coming out of it. 

Taylor: Yeah. And so many people study, consume, or even thinking of buying your first short term rental, you can study, study, study everything under the sun.

I would say I learned more in the first four weeks of owning that first Blue Ridge cabin than I did in the four months of bigger pockets, consuming YouTube, reading books, networking events. And so many people, what I say is you’ve got to get off the starting block because you’ll never be able to consume everything, but you’ve got to take that swing.

And like I said, I learned more in the first four weeks of operating that Airbnb, that very first one that I did in the four months of lead up and me spent studying, consuming content, et cetera. 

Gil: Yeah. And I bet you this next phase of you doing your development, this first project, you’re going to learn so much more.

The next one is just going to be so much better than this. This might be a home run, but like. It will definitely accelerate the next one that you bring on. 

Taylor: Yeah, no, I would love, I would be happy with a single. I’m just trying not to strike out. Don’t, don’t, don’t lose, lose my shirt. Uh, the goal here is a single, um, and to, yeah, learn, learn something from it so that that next deal I can keep going on.

Cause yeah, that’s development is you gotta get the first one, right. Or else you can’t really keep going. And I would love a home run, but I’ll take a single, uh, on this first one. 

Gil: Yeah. I mean, if anyone listens to like bigger pockets in those very early days and Brandon was still there, like. He tells everybody like your first property, long term, short term, whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be a home run and you shouldn’t expect it to be a home run.

But if you can go in there and you do okay, you get to first base, you’re a winner. You’re a winner because you now know all the traps and all the things that you need to go into to make the next one better. Yeah, man. That’s well said. Very well. Um, Taylor’s second question or last question. Um, what’s the one big takeaway that you want our listeners to, to put into action today?

Taylor: I think the biggest takeaway is to understand exactly who your ideal booking client is upfront because acquisition is going to lead everything downstream. If you acquire the wrong property in the wrong market at the wrong price, If you set it up wrong, design it. Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re the president of, you know, the four seasons resort, you can’t out operate a bad starting block.

So really understand exactly who your target demographic is up front. And then you’ll be able to collect significant wins above your competition every step of the way downstream from buying the right property, setting it up correctly, designing it correctly, and then lastly, marketing it correctly. And if you mess up up front, it becomes significantly harder to kind of catch up downstream.

So, to me, I know I live at the front of the funnel in data and acquisitions, but it’s truly, I think, one of the most impactful starting points and skews of this asset class. And that’s where I would tell people really nail it up front. And then you have a ton of room for air on the back end. 

Gil: Yeah. You almost make me think about like underwriting.

We’ve always thought about underwriting as like the hard numbers that goes into into an analysis, the cash on cash. What’s your, what’s your expenses? What’s your prop, like what your projected profits and so on. But there’s this whole other side of it that a lot of us, we often forget about. Um, the, the other side of underwriting is like making sure that like, This property can outperform for many, many years, um, with differentiation.

Like, I totally agree with you and I maybe that’s a framework that someone should put together. 

Taylor: Oh 

Gil: man, that would be great. Awesome. Taylor, where can more folks find out more about you? 

Taylor: Yeah, certainly. Um, I hang out on, uh, X formerly Twitter at Mr. Jones SDRs. I’m on LinkedIn. I try writing and sharing what I’m seeing in day to day.

So, um, you know, try to give back as much to this asset class as possible. Uh, find me Taylor Jones. Um, if you want some help from a data and acquisition standpoint. Um, you could find us at, uh, str search. com. Uh, feel free to book a call with our team. We’ll be happy to talk to you about everything we support investors with from a data and acquisition standpoint.

So anybody who does need help on that starting block and getting it right, that’s really what we do is take the knowledge we’ve learned and, you know, really share it and help others. So yeah, str search. com. Feel free to book a time if you want, or reach out to me directly on social. I, uh, always happy to try to reply when the, when the DMS don’t get too overcrowded.

Gil: Um, and since this is a collab show, like if anyone needs help with direct bookings, like feel free to reach out to me. I love talking about all things direct. That’s kind of why we ended up starting this podcast is like, there’s just a wealth of knowledge that isn’t really accessible for many folks that isn’t familiar with the space.

So I get the fortunate opportunity to bring on really talented folks that have done really well in direct bookings and not everybody comes from the same lens. And so like every, I get to talk about different aspects of it. Um, so yeah, if you ever need help with direct bookings resources, definitely, if you need help building out your website, um, you can check out crafterstays.

co, um, and check us out. Hopefully, Taylor, I get to onboard you in a few weeks or a few days. Um, yeah, I’m super excited. 

Taylor: Yeah, guys, this is great. Uh, definitely make sure to, uh, Check out what the new iteration is excited to get my hands on it. But, um, really the simplicity I think is what, what drew me to everything you guys have to offer.

So, um, if you’ve been on the fence about it, I think talking to Gil, since he said he’s going to personally still talk to you, you should definitely book a time and, uh, and see it for yourself. 

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as, as long as I have time to, to onboard every single customer, I’m pretty happy. Like we had a time where I couldn’t meet with someone for a week and I was super happy that they actually like, like kept the, kept the, kept the calendar invite.

And I got to chat with them even like a week after they onboarded themselves and it’s just like talking to them. It’s, it’s, it’s really helpful because I get to improve the product. 

Taylor: No, that’s great, man. This was, uh, this was fun. I enjoyed it. 

Gil: Awesome. Thanks Taylor. 

Taylor: Thank you, man. 

Gil: All right. 

See you next time.

Bye.