No Job Boards, No OTAs, Just Bookings: Direct Bookings the ‘CraftedStays Way’ with Owen Johnson

Summary and Highlights

🧑‍💼 Meet Owen — Founder, CEO, and STR Operator

Owen runs a short-term rental business that he built from the ground up. What started as one property has grown into a remote-managed portfolio, thanks to a strong team, solid systems, and a clear focus on what works.

He’s not just a host—he’s built a company that helps others succeed with STRs. His approach combines smart tech, consistent marketing, and hands-on team management—even while working from a boat off the coast of British Columbia.

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🔑 What You Can Learn From Owen

1. Tech Stack & Tools That Work

• PMS: Owen uses Guesty to manage operations.
• Dynamic Pricing: PriceLabs helps him stay competitive.
• CRM & Automations: He tracks leads, follows up with guests, and builds direct booking funnels.
• Marketing Tools: Email platforms and AI tools help generate content, including emails and social posts.

2. Hiring & Managing Virtual Assistants

• Owen’s team includes over six virtual assistants.
• Roles range from guest communication and inbox support to social content creation.
• He hires through team referrals—not job boards.
• His focus: fair pay, consistency, and treating people like part of the team.

3. Direct Booking Done Right

• He’s clear about what works: simple, fast websites that push people to book.
• The layout is focused—no clutter, no distractions.
• He prioritizes mobile experience, easy payment, and instant confirmation.
• Tools like Mailchimp, Meta, and Google Ads help him retarget guests who drop off.

4. Early Investment in Marketing

• Owen brought on a social media hire early, which helped shape the brand.
• He’s tested influencer partnerships and collaborative content.
• While his offshore team had to learn the U.S. market, they’ve grown together.
• They now track results closely to see which campaigns bring in bookings.

5. Running the Business with the Right Mindset

• Owen believes in acting like an owner, not an employee.
• He’s honest about failure being part of the process.
• He’s built systems and a team so he can work from anywhere—literally.
• For him, the goal is freedom, not just revenue.

6. Book That Shaped His Thinking

• Owen points to The Holy Bible as his biggest influence.
• His values and direction in life are grounded in his faith.

🌐 Connect with Owen Johnson

📧 Email: ⁠team@nwpads.com⁠
📞 Phone: (425) 516-7928
📸 IG: ⁠@northwestpads⁠
🌐 Website: ⁠www.nwpads.com

Owen: To build businesses, you know, don’t be afraid to fail. ’cause I’ve done a lot of failure too. I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded to get where I’m at today. So you have to stick your neck out there. You have to build grit with it at the same time and get a thicker skin in the process. So my idea would be, you know, be dedicated.

Don’t let somebody else build it for you. Build it yourself. Own your decisions. You know, there’s a lot there. I mean, there’s not one piece of mindset, but other than the fact is those are your dollars and you don’t, you’re not rich by giving it all away. You have to protect your money. You have to protect your people ownership mentality.

There you go. That’s the one piece of mindset I. You’re not an employee. This is your business Ownership mentality is a state of mind, and when you’re brand new in business, you better have it. Otherwise your business will fail. If you treat your business like you’re an employee, you’re gonna be an employee for somebody else.

Good.

Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to Book Solid. The podcast where we bring in top operators to share their strategies, to help you maximize your booking, scale, your revenue, and stay ahead of short-term rentals. On today’s show, I have Owen Johnson. He’s actually a new client of ours that we brought on, uh, to craft his stays.

I wanted ahead to, to come to the show because he has grown his social following and he has just a, just a. Interesting story on how he’s approached things, the learnings that he’s done along the way, uh, how he grew his account to 46,000 followers, and how he’s leveraging that now that he’s. Broaden in that following.

And we’ll also talk about some of the things that he’s doing along the side around the technology. Uh, now that we’re implementing a site, we get to approach things like advertising, uh, retargeting ads, conversion funnels. So we’ll talk a a bit into really how he’s thinking about his tech stack, uh, and how we’re leveraging the new platform together.

So I’m really excited to bring him onto the show and I hope you guys enjoy it.

Gil: Hey Owen, welcome to the show.

Owen: Hey Gil, how’s it going? Thanks for having me on. Appreciate the, the get together here today.

Gil: yeah. I’m excited to have you on. Uh, we met a couple weeks back, uh, because we were doing a, an onboarding call and I was just looking at your portfolio and I immediately knew that you are a customer that I wanted to work with, and I also wanted you to be, uh, be on the show and kinda share your knowledge on, on what you’ve done as well too.

So I’m excited to have you here.

Owen: Yeah, yeah. Great, man. No, I was really impressed with, uh, your, um, your portfolio, how you guys do your websites and stuff and the way you reach back and showcase the build and stuff like that. So I’ve, uh, gone through quite a few different builds on websites since I started my journey. And, um, I could see that the talent was there and, and that, you know, you understood the deliverables that everybody’s really looking for.

And a lot of times we don’t see that. So, Super excited to work with you.

Gil: I appreciate that. I think one of it has to do with just, I think two things. Like one, us being hos ourselves and, and knowing what you’re trying to do with the websites. It really helps understanding like what you’re trying to communicate. And I, the second part is like, I still onboard almost all of our clients, so I get to talk to hosts all the time.

I, I get to see the best of the best and in terms of the websites and what people were trying to build and what you’re trying to get to. So I was super excited to kinda help showcase your properties, because when I saw your, I actually, I think it was your Instagram feed. I just saw some really beautiful properties and the way that you are able to communicate that story there through your social profile, that was really impressive.

So definitely I wanna have you talk about that and I think like, because of that, I, I wanted to make sure that I showed you what we can do for you. And I’m, I’m, I’m super excited you chose with us.

Owen : Yeah. Super excited about that too. Um, direct booking has been something that’s, you know, primarily it was just to get, um, more bookings, right? And, and then of course it was also to avoid paying the fees, right? But one thing that people don’t realize is in direct bookings you can steer your audience towards you by utilizing either Google ads or, you know, meta ads or you can even use, um, SEO, which is super important.

And, and the more you fine tune that crop. Uh, the more bookings you get and if you overall get more bookings, then you can raise your price point for your, your properties. And so for an e-commerce site, basically it’s, it’s a massive deal. So we use all kinds of links like, uh, um, on our Instagram to steer our audience towards our direct bookings.

We use called actions in our, uh, Instagram ads to go to our booking site. And it’s a big deal. And then of course, um, Google Analytics rewards us with that kind of stuff if we do it right. So yeah, man, it’s a big deal. Absolutely. And one thing you gotta remember is like, like if you’re on Airbnb and vr BO, which you have to be on, I mean, you really can’t avoid it.

Um, they don’t, they may not reward you for other things that you’re doing, so you gotta be your own advocate. And that’s what a direct booking site’s all about.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely felt that when we first chatted there. Um, before we get too deep into it, do you mind giving folks kind of an introduction on who you are, where your portfolio is, and kind of how you approach things and how you’ve grown?

Owen : Sure. Yeah, you bet. So Gil, back in 2014, I got my real estate license. Um, I’d been, uh, newly married for about four years to my current wife and last wife. And uh, so she, um, she was a real estate broker before she met me and we, we said, Hey, we gotta get back into this game and, you know, be doing our own thing.

’cause we were both working W2 jobs. I was working at Boeing and she was working as a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines. So we were like, what can we do to, you know, make some more money and have more freedom and more time to do what we want? And I was kind of burning out on my W2 job, so she said. Why don’t you get your real estate broker’s license?

And I said, okay, screw it. I’ll go get it. So I went and got it and um, and I went ahead and uh, and got that going. And then I started working with clients and very quickly thereafter, still working full-time at Boeing, but doing, um, real estate on the weekends and stuff like that. And about the same time we, um, came up with an idea for a business a.com, property finders.com.

So we did that and that was like, just, just a real quick brainchild, wife sketched out a logo. And um, and we, we put it up and we know, went to GoDaddy, bought a website domain and my mom was a web designer for Cobalt, so it was easy for her to build a quick website for us. And next thing you know, we had a, uh, we had a website and people were like, what the hell?

How’d you get this going? You know, at Boeing they were like, what are you doing? I says, well, I’m gonna be a real estate mogul. What do you think I’m doing? And at 2016, I quit. Quit Boeing and. Uh, went full-time, sold ity houses my first year in real estate. And, um, and very quickly my, my first full-time year in real estate.

I’ve been doing real estate already, but quickly our, our, um, clients wanted to start investing ’cause economy was turning around. So we started getting clients that wanted, um, to buy, um, investment properties or sell investment properties. And so that kind of got me introduced to the idea of short term rentals.

I didn’t even know what that meant. And, um, we were told it was like kind of a corporate rental thing or, you know, maybe nurses would be traveling, nurses staying houses and stuff. So a couple real estate investments good for me later. Um, we bought, uh, a handful of properties the same month and they were all this riverside cabins and, uh, we.

You know, the investments allowed us to fix the properties up that we had done. So we fixed the properties up and we were just gonna flip ’em. We’d been flipping houses for a bit, you know, to make money. So being a real estate broker is one thing to get commissioned. It’s another thing to do the flips and make the money on the other side as well.

’cause being in real estate, you get exposed to all the good deals. They’re just right in front of you. The gu the, the sellers are like, Hey, just buy my house. Okay, I’ll buy it. What the hell? You know? So that’s what we did and we kept the houses this time instead of selling ’em. And we said, why don’t we try on, try ’em on Airbnb?

And this is right about the time that, uh, pandemic happened, right? So the real estate market was kind of going a little wacky and stuff, and we really didn’t know what to do. So we were like, okay, let’s hold onto ’em and see what happens. Right? They just started filling up, man, it was crazy. But the first thing we did, Gil, was we got a direct booking website and, and then.

That was cool, but there wasn’t getting any traction. There was, nobody knew about us. A little bit of Google Analytics and that’s about it. So it was Airbnb and VRBO and then trying to steer our guests, um, towards our direct booking website. You know, after they stayed with us, if they wanted to come back really quickly, I realized that wasn’t gonna be enough.

So we went ahead and hired a social media company and we collaborated with a company called The Cabin Land out of uk, um, Yaz and Bella, good friends of mine. And they helped me, um, get a social media presence going. And then we were able to, um, you know, very expensively hire influencers and stuff like that to come stay at our cabin since we had no social media presence.

So basically we’re gonna ride fully on the backs of them without any. A thing to offer them other than a free stay or maybe a, or pay for them to be at our properties. So we went big really quick on that. And then, um, we hired some local talent as well that were also influencer level, uh, producers that knew how to create good content, but also understood kind of the soup behind the things.

So they’re all about the cozy cabin look. And we ended up quickly just investing in, in the idea of advertising it. So it was more advertising through ads. It was more advertising through, um, having, we were just inviting any social media influencer that was, um, either cute or funny or had good content or anything to come state our properties and then showcase our properties and put ’em out on the web.

So that created bookings for us quite a bit, but. Um, what really changed the game for us was when we started doing giveaways. So we would partner with, uh, uh, some larger social media, um, groups out there, uh, content creators out there that had a hundred plus thousand followers. And, um, we would partner with ’em and then we’d say, Hey, you know, one day we said, why don’t we do a giveaway?

It’s just like, we didn’t even know it was a thing. And so people were giving away, like you’d see it like a gift certificate or maybe a, a free dinner or something. Well, we gave away a two night stay for any time of the year except for holidays, free of charge. They can pick it, you know, and, and for two people, two nights at this particular location.

And when you’ve got an audience of all these cabin follower people that want to see cozy cabins or whatever they want to see, I. They’re like, wow, okay, I’m gonna put in for this. All you gotta do is share the page and like it and follow and all this other stuff, all this, all these requirements that are really super simple.

And then they can enter as often as they want by sharing the page even more, so they get more chances to win. Next thing you know, we end up with 5,000 followers and it happened rapidly. So then you do that again and again and again, and then pretty soon you’re at 46,000 followers where we’re at today.

So that’s how we did it. But we didn’t want just any follower. We have a targeted audience and we want that audience to be very relevant towards our properties. So, ’cause you know, if you can, you can buy all the followers you want, you can get followers from the Middle East, you can get followers anywhere you want.

Pretty soon you got, you know, um, 200,000 followers that have absolutely no relevance towards your business. And unfortunately. It actually hurts your business when you get followers like that versus the followers that are really demographically right for your business. So it was a lot of money to get it there.

You know, you think about it like, you know, you get high level influencers, you gotta pay ’em to be there. But at the end of the day, I think I probably, I probably paid about, you know, honestly probably about 70 5K to get where I’m at today in advertising and what have you. But it was a small price to pay because when you got 20 properties out there that are booking and you create, uh, a following, so then they come to you and they book your properties.

It doesn’t even matter so much at that point what your direct booking engine is. But the problem with that is that’s not enough. You need good SEO, you need good convertible websites that are going to do the conversion for you. You need a good follow-up campaign for your, um. For your past guess, you know, like a CRM type of layout where you’re dealing with, okay, let’s get these suckers back in here.

You know, these guys really liked it here, but we’re not talking to them if we don’t talk to them. Just like in real estate, they’re not gonna talk to you. They’re not gonna look at you and they’re not gonna be relevant. So, you know, like MailChimp and stuff like that, you really gotta have that all together.

And that’s what we’ve learned that, you know, it’s not just one thing, it’s everything together. It’s good customer service. We’ve got a team of VAs over in the Philippines. We had a good meeting this morning with them. We’ve got some on the boots on the ground managers here. And what adds up, you know, we’re, we’re probably pulling about a million and a half, 2 million a year in sales for our properties because of the magnitude of our properties and the kind of properties that they are.

So, you know, that, that adds up in dollars for our owners is we’re not, it’s not just our properties. We manage and we own properties as well. So there’s of course, there’s lots of costs involved.

Gil: Yeah, I was gonna ask, is it, have you, so you started off kind of building out your own properties and it sounds like you were doing a burster or you’re buying, flipping, keeping yourself, renting it on, on, on the OTAs. And now it sounds like you’ve gone into co-hosting or property management as well too.

So you’re managing for others now.

Owen : Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we were actually originally started by, um, helping others buy properties. ’cause we weren’t in a financial wherewithal to do it. And then when we were able to do a couple good investment flips, we were able to start buying our own properties. And then we created our own Airbnb, you know, short term rental experience with OTAs, like you said.

First it was Airbnb quickly after that was VRVO, then booking.com and you know, and then some of the other OTAs out there as well. Um, so we did that and then it, it became a thing where, hey, we like what you’re doing on your Instagram. Can you do this for us too? So we started getting headhunted, you know, if you’re doing something good or something noticeable, other, um, STR owners or STR buyers seek you out.

Every time we sold a property that was an STR, we got the management contract on it, it seemed like. And every time that, uh, and of course we also had the vision, we didn’t like just sell the property and tell ’em to go down to, you know, goodwill and load all their used stuff in the property and we’ll make you a hundred thousand dollars a year.

It’s not the way it works, but it’s kind of what we do. Um, so we’re the ones that have to actually create the properties, like the, somebody will buy the property, it will close on it through us, you know, as the real estate brokers. And then we’ll put a team of people together to actually reimagine what the property can be.

And then, you know, ensues another a hundred K or so into the property, and then now you got a property that’s gonna generate a hundred thousand a year in, you know, gross revenue.

Gil: Nice.

Owen : So that was the game. It was kind of like, you know, and you’re always, you always got the people you’re following too. Like, okay, how’s this guy doing?

Okay, let’s do that, you know, and all right, let’s do this. So, and then, then we started seeing copycats of us, like, oh, we must be doing it right. It’s cool. So,

Gil: Has it gotten more competitive in your space because of that?

Owen : our state’s super competitive, right? So I mean, it’s like, you know, there’s hot zones in every state. Um, we have a hot zone, Leavenworth, Washington, and then we got a hot zone, the, uh, central and North Cascades, um, of the Pacific Northwest.

So it’s, um, lots of riverside cabins and, um, themes behind it, you know. You can take a property that you can buy for a couple hundred thousand dollars and you can turn that property into a hundred thousand Euro income.

Gil: No way. That’s,

Owen : not so much anymore. I mean, you’re probably gonna spend 500 or something like that,

Gil: that’s still pretty good returns if you’re, if you’re, if you’re bringing in six figures on a $500,000 purchase price, so your actually down payment’s probably gonna be much less than that.

Owen : Yeah, absolutely. It’s not a bad conversion, you know, and I mean, it’s really hard to be an LTR um, model guy, you know, after doing this, it takes more work, you know, to do a successful STR business. Um, and we could also go hands off and we could have more hands off, but, um, it just really brings it together when we, we conclude all the different, um, you know, the facets in it.

The guest experience is much better.

Gil: yeah, yeah. We find that the most, the people that have the strongest direct bookings, they typically are the ones that have often the best reviews. They care about the guest experience. It really does. Like that is definitely a common denominator. If you don’t have good guest experiences, you’re not creating stays that people wanna talk about.

It’s really hard to do well in the write bookings.

Owen : Yeah. And we also end up with like, you know, there’s requirements. Like we look at the amenity list, like, what does somebody want for, uh, you know, what’s their, their hot buttons? You know, it’s like, is it a fire, a fire pit? Is it a, you know, a wood stove in the house or a fireplace? Is it a hot tub? Is it a sauna?

Is it a cold plunge? Is it a remote workstation? Is it a TV on the wall? Is it a plush mattress? You know, is it, is it, you know, um, what do you call it? The, uh, the coffee bar, not just a Keurig. Like do we got the whole, all the different kinds of coffee.

Gil: All right.

Owen : Options that you could have. Um, you know, and all those things add up.

So it’s not just one of them, it’s all of them. And you can’t always have all of them in every single property. But it seems like the more we have and like dog friendly, that’s crazy in itself. You could have a property just be dog friendly. That’s a new children of today. I mean, it’s not, people don’t pack around their babies so much.

They pack around their dogs.

Gil: Yeah, I mean that, that’s, that’s very apparent, especially in, in Washington where you are, where there’s a lot of young travelers there that travel with their pets. Um, it’s, it’s definitely, I’ve seen it quite a bit.

Owen : I have to make decisions every day. Like, do I want this property to be dog friendly? Okay, this person’s struggling a little bit, this owner’s struggling. Do we want to just convert it to dog friendly? Or they know maybe they got pet allergies or something. And um, and we got properties that are like really hard to be dog friendly and we’re like, okay, can we do this?

Because it is a definite revenue game changer. It’s more so than hot tubs. It’s more so than anything. Just being pet friendly is the number one, absolute number one thing.

Gil: Yeah. So is is, is it now that all your properties are pet-friendly or are there some that still

Owen : got a couple holdouts and that’s all good, you know, and we’re actually converting a couple away from being pet friendly. Um, we have, uh, boutique hotels over in Leavenworth that we created and, um, with our investor partners. So we have a, we have a couple good partners on our investment team, and those properties are, uh, you know, people in, in Leavenworth, it’s like a, a village.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but it’s like a little Bavarian village and people go there for the Bavarian Mountain Village experience. So, you know, kind of like the little Alps of, uh, Washington. And so when you’re there. You know, it’s all about the beer, the wine, the culinary events, and it’s not about your dog.

And so if we give you a place for your dog, you’re gonna leave your dog there and you’re gonna go to town without your dog to non dog friendly establishments and drink and have a mari old time while your dog barks at somebody in the next room or next suite, or the next property. So we’re like, okay, this isn’t working.

It’s, it’s getting good revenue, but our reviews go down. And if our reviews go down, then we get hit from, uh, Airbnb, VRBO, like we’re somebody bad, but we’re also providing what everybody wants. So it’s kind of a double-edged sword.

Gil: Yeah, it, it sounds like there’s a pretty good feedback loop with your stays where you’re trying to figure out what are the types of amenities, how do you want to furnish it and, and eventize it. To make sure that you’re hitting that ideal guest avatar there. You’re not just trying to repeat the same thing across your entire portfolio.

Owen : That’s right. Yep. And you really do. You gotta, you gotta have the right, the right options for everybody, but not always the same place. So, and now we’re, we’re in a growing business right now. I mean, we’re finally at a position where we can scale up. Um, we’ve had a couple growing pains along the way as we’ve tried to scale and now we’re, we’re ready to scale, you know, 40, 50 properties.

But we’ve seen a lot of others out there that have scaled without being ready

Gil: Mm-hmm.

Owen : and they, all of a sudden they quickly got the 200 properties or something and you, pretty soon you’re v casa. And that’s a pretty bad model to look at. You know, Acasa was a failure model. People still, I think, use ’em, but nothing to crap talk ’em.

But it’s been a really bad guest experience for most guests and owners. So, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like you want to be the property management company that gets it. You know, and as you scale, you wanna make sure you’re accounting and your bookkeeping and all the good nitty gritty stuff is being done Right.

Or you’re in trouble because, you know, if you got a couple hundred thousand dollars in your account every month, because it’s not all your money, you know? So you, that’s a lot of other people’s monies that you’re collecting and you’re distributing

Gil: Yeah. Um, so are you operating as a official property manager or are you doing the more hosting model? There

Owen : No, I’m a property manager.

Gil: Yeah. So, so all the revenues go directly to you and then you redistribute that back to your homeowners.

Owen : That is correct. Yep. Yep. So we, we have to do it that way because we created most of the listings instead of the owners creating the listings. One thing we actually have not done is successfully, take other people’s existing. OTA listings that they have and incorporate ’em into our business. So you can do it as a co-host, but the problem is, is that there’s not a real good PMS out there to manage that.

So we’ve gone through, um, a handful of PMSs, almost a handful of PMSs to figure out what works the best. Right now we’re with Guesty and Guesty seems to be working pretty good, but uh, nobody’s really done a great job of a co-host connection for PMSs. So it’s very underutilized and, um, you know, under rewarded right now at this point.

So you really have to stick to the OTA itself to do most of the transactional level. And that’s really hard when you got like five or six co-hosts. And we did have five or six co-hosts on all of our listings, and now we just have two.

Gil: Yeah, I, I, I’m, I’m guessing you’re trying to move folks into recreating the listings on your side so that you don’t have to manage on multiple accounts.

Owen : That’s correct

Gil: Yeah, I, I’ve, I’ve heard that quite a bit, especially on the co-hosting side where, um, not when you have, when you’re in the Coing game and you bring on another client that already has a listing on there, you can’t just move their property over, especially if there’s two, two different pmms there.

And I’ve seen some where I, I think the notable example I know about is like, owner as allows you to share properties across different owner as users there. So you can see someone else has managed their. They’re configurations, but for the most part you can’t, you can’t do that with many PMSs there.

Owen : and I’ve heard some good stuff about Hospitable also having some options there. But, um, Guesty doesn’t yet, and we’ve already done our swaps too many this last couple years. So we’re kind of at home now.

Gil: Yeah. It’s, it’s hard. I, and I heard some pretty good things about, about Guesty. They’re, they’re pretty solid for a lot of folks that are in the, the double digits portfolio size.

Owen : Yeah, they’ve been really good for that. And we, that was one of the main reasons we moved over. We were with Lofi before and I’ve met with the CEO of Lofi a couple weeks ago and we, we talked about the limitations and the size ’cause he was brand new, CEO just like a week old into the business, taking over for the family.

Great company over there. But they’re really set up for about somebody under 10 listings. You know, it’s like we have listings all over the state and you have different message placeholders you gotta ship off to your guests, you know, and different things that, different processes for every zone and, and different managers and stuff like that.

So they have different ways of doing it. We wanna make sure we, we meet all those needs and it shouldn’t be complicated. Guie made it very easy for it not to be complicated. And also to make it so we can scale up very easily. And they also have a very good sync connection. So you can build the listing once in Gusty and all the photos and the marketing comments and amenities will transfer to just about all the OTAs out there in a real time way.

So to me, if I have to have four or five OTAs open, A-P-M-S-A-A task scheduler, you know, Google Calendar, WhatsApp, all of it up, man, I’m like, I can’t get a VA to do that and I can’t be everywhere. And I mean, we can, we can train a robot, but even they’re gonna have a time with that, you know, it’s gonna be a little bit of a challenge.

So most of our VAs run off a cell phone, man. I don’t care what they say. That’s what they do. And if it’s they can’t run it off a cell phone, then, then it’s not gonna really happen. Otherwise they’re gonna, they’re gonna have misses.

Gil: Yeah, especially on the cell phone, they’re, they’re probably using the Airbnb app there and having to log out of an Airbnb app and log into another one to answer a guest or to look something up or make a change. That’s, that’s difficult. It’s easy on a browser with different profiles, but it’s rather difficult on a mobile device.

Owen : Yeah, I was talking to ’em today. They actually told me that they use a laptop and they use their cell phone because of the connectivity in the Philippines. And just, you know, the way it works is not the same, it is here in the States. So they have to use the power of wherever they can get the best connection.

So they use Airbnb on the cell, on the cell phone, and then they use all the scheduling and like, uh, Guesty on the desktop

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you use Guesty, um, pricing, uh, pricing optimizations, or do you

Owen : You know, I don’t, I talk to our fellows over there at Guestie. Um, they’re great on that. But what I do is a whole different game. Um, I partnered with one of the, um, the. Most well-known revenue managers in the country. And, um, he has, uh, done a great job. Um, and he’s got a, a great business and he’s just brought on a partner.

And so he used to be with Vic Casa, he was with Airbnb prior to that, and he does revenue management. We use Price Labs as the engine that a lot of people use Price Labs. Um, we use Price Labs as the engine. And then there’s a lot of stuff behind the scenes that make the prices really accurate. So the biggest thing is I don’t wanna leave something on the table.

If I can get a booking, I want to grab it. So it’s taken a little bit of, uh, culture differences between me and them. You know, like I’ve always, last minute I would get all my bookings three weeks out, nothing else. I would get nothing far out. It’d be three weeks out maybe. And I mean, it, it looked like I was going out of business every month.

And, um. And I would just sit there and micromanage those three weeks on pricing and just like, okay, what can I do to get a booking? You know? And so I’d end up with, you know, really high occupancy, but I was leaving money on the table, you know, so with Price Labs and a good strong revenue management business partner, it’s made a big difference for us.

We can get bookings that are, you know, I wouldn’t pay that money, but I really, really appreciate the guest that does. Let’s put it that way, you know, so it’s

Gil: that’s interesting. So, so now, now that you use Price Labs and this Revenue Manager your’re, booking lead times has increased, it sounds like, dramatically from whatever it was, three weeks to probably now multiple months.

Owen : Yeah. So that, that also caused me to, you know, reevaluate my bookkeeping and accounting system because now we’re looking at like getting monies, you know, a year in advance, you know, especially with like, uh, VRBO and booking.com. We’re getting, we’re getting paid in advance. So we’re not getting paid all of it.

We’re getting paid 50% of it. So we’re collecting funds, you know, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. They may cancel, the economy may change anything could happen. So if you gotta have that in your piggy bank, you better make sure you have it in your piggy bank and what piggy bank it’s in. And it’s not your piggy bank and it’s in a trust account, so

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I know what you mean because what you can’t do is you can’t pull out on future revenues, because if future revenues cancels and you pull that out of your accounts and move it around into a savings or whatever it may be, um, or use it to refurnish a, a, a property, you’re, you could potentially be in the negative because you’ve already redistributed those funds that hasn’t really been completed yet.

Owen : Yeah, exactly. And we’ve seen that before. We have a good cushion because of our investments, but we didn’t know what we were doing right or wrong, and we ended up partnering with another business that’s a guesty partner business. And, uh, that’s thorough accounting out of Texas, Nate over there. And, uh, so we’re super excited about that collaboration and partnership that’s gonna really bring us into the 22nd century, basically.

So we’re really, really excited about that. So having our monies, uh, we’re appropriately placed. It’s not a lack of money. It’s like, whose money is that? Oh, okay,

Gil: It’s know. It’s knowing

Owen : right there on the dot dotted line. Right. You know,

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For, for me, this wasn’t an issue in the very beginning when we were primarily Airbnb, but now we’ve actually ramped up quite a bit on our VRBO and quite a bit on the direct, and on both of those latter ones, you’re getting revenues or you’re getting payment pretty much upfront.

And what we, what we had to do is then we had to run our reports on a monthly basis to see, before we do any draws, we always look at our reports on what future revenues are coming explicitly from those two channels. And then we will use that to help us understand like, okay, what is the actual buffer that we have on these accounts and what is excess that we can re-leverage for CapEx upgrades that we may wanna do, or owner distributions or whatever they might be.

Owen : Yeah, exactly. You know, and I mean, you got taxation issues there too. Like Washington State, we have a, um, we have a wonderful taxation agency called the, was State Department of Revenue. And if you’re not in tune with them in Washington State, they’ll find you eventually and make sure you’re in tune with them.

So they’re, uh, they could be a, they could be a wonderful partner, but if you’re not in tune with them, you’re probably just gonna get your knees taken out and that’ll be that. So we, we want to make sure that we’re covering our, our hind ends on the taxation side of things. And in Washington, we’ve got some major tax implications coming down the pike right now.

So that’s another major reason for, uh, you know, direct booking websites because their, uh, Washington state legislation’s, uh, proposed legislation right now is to punish anybody that is an STR owner and make them pay for all affordable housing. So yeah, we’re facing down a 6%, um, extra tax just for Airbnb and VRBO, not our direct booking websites.

So that way the hotel industry that, you know, spawned this lovely little taxation, um, they can, uh, stay out of it because it just affects Airbnb and VRBO, um, bookings. So they’ve, they’ve, it’s, it’s basically unconstitutional, but all the same. We gotta partner with Washington State if we want to be in business in Washington state.

So we also gotta realize, hey, get a good SEO website that’s going to drive bookings towards us in a more organic way than waiting on somebody else to give them to us via the OTAs. So that’s, that’s a big deal, you know, here in Washington,

Gil: You mentioned, uh, early on that you built your. Your marketing engine in collaboration with an agency abroad. Um, and are you still using the agency today or have you now know kind of some of the fundamentals and it has taken that on in-house? How do, how are you looking at that now?

Owen : well, you know, you become an expert if you pay attention, right? And so you at least enough to get you in trouble. And so we watched the results and we see where we get the results. We made some great friendships and met some wonderful people, but at the end of the day, we have to be also bottom line oriented.

And our bottom line, if it’s not increasing by the output that we’re giving it, then we’re doing something

Gil: Mm-hmm.

Owen : So we’re always constantly measuring what our receivables are for our output, and in this case, we are no longer, um, uh, doing anything. Uh, as far as outsourcing our social media. We have an in-house social media manager.

She works exclusively for us. She is foreign based. She’s based outta the Philippines, and she does a great job. Um, and we are doing more, uh, content on our own. Um, we were real estate photographers also, so we know how to fly drones and do all the fun stuff. So, and we’re also collaborating with others that have gave us deliverables and we just continue to collaborate with the ones that give us good deliverables.

And deliverables are followers or bookings. So you have to take your choice. Like me, it was like, okay, I gotta get to a certain level. So follower growth was the number one thing. So I’d always have an audience, and now it’s more about converting those followers into bookings and giving them value that will create bookings.

So, um, you know, I mean honestly it’s, you know, it’s retargeting. It’s, it’s getting the names and the emails and the phone numbers of all the guests. You know, that’s a big deal. And it’s about posting relevant content for your audience and making sure your audience is relevant to what you’re selling. And here we’re selling a cozy cabin on the river or a resort stay in Leavenworth or hiking or river rafting or skiing or something, or wine country or brew pub or whatever.

We’re selling a vibe, you know, dog in front of the fireplace kind of vibe. So.

Gil: Yeah, I, I think that, that, that, I, I think that sums it up quite nicely for anyone listening to this. I, I, if you check out the Instagram later on, and I’ll leave it in the, in the show notes, uh, so you can get a few more followers on, on that as well too. But you definitely feel that vibe coming through when you look at your entire feed in there.

And when we were doing our initial concept of your website together, when we’re working together, I. I basically looked through your Instagram and I tried to figure out like, what is the essence that we wanna bring into the site? And hopefully we capture that in, in, in that initial mockup that I shared with you.

But it, it really, you can definitely feel that vibe right there.

Owen : Yeah. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to portray it. Right. You know? Um, and I think you got that. You got it. Figure it out. So I’m not concerned at all about that. Um, we we’re really just trying to portray the vibe and we’re trying to get the reward on SEO obviously, so we can, you know, be featured on page one or two, know, and not on page six or seven.

And the zones that we’re trying to target. So there are a lot of people that just go to the Google and they want to see what is out there for direct booking options. When they go to a town, I’m one of ’em, I don’t go to Airbnb to just see where I’m gonna stay. I will say, okay, I’m gonna Leavenworth, they’ll just type in Leavenworth cabins or I’m going to Whitefish, I’m going, you know, Whitefish, you know, stays whatever.

And then it pops up all these options. And generally they’re options that you don’t see on Airbnb or VRBO. A lot of times I’ll get a lot of direct phone calls, you know, from people, Hey, you got any occupancy tonight available? You know, any vacancy? And I’m like, yeah, we do. You know? And also a site that converts well, right?

Like it’s gotta be easy to see what’s out there for the guest. It shouldn’t be a puzzle to get to the option to book. A property or see what’s available on the calendar. And I mean, it’s so often you see a lot of copycat sites out there on the direct booking sites, and they’re based on most of the same engines out there.

But, you know, here’s what we have available for tonight. You know, that’s a really cool option. Okay, this is what I have available for tonight. Okay. What, what options come up? You put your date range in, it shows you the options available. You know, and that’s, um, that’s what, that’s what Airbnb does, and that’s what we need to be doing too.

Gil: Yeah, I, I think like one of the challenges is that a lot of folks will get into direct bookings and they’ll find either Squarespace and Wix and they’ll try to build out their site, and you can actually pretty put together a pretty well. Well, good looking site on, on either of those platforms, but I think the, the challenge is that that disconnect back into your PMS and your availability there.

And that’s one of the things that we had to, to do very early on and invest very early on, is just those PMS connections. And that allowed us to actually streamline the experience quite a bit. Where, like, for instance, on our side, if someone’s putting dates in there and they’re searching for dates as they’re going through the booking process, we wanna make sure that we remember and carry that date forward so they’re not having to reenter that date, for instance, on the booking page. And that was, that was not easy to do in the very beginning. And so we’ve had to work pretty closely with our PMS partners to figure out how do we leverage the APIs, how do we store things, how do we cookie things to make sure that the guest has a good experience on both mobile and desktop. Um, but it took us a little while to get, to get to that point.

Owen : And that’s such a big deal, like, you know, just that alone, that’s like a massive one. Honestly, Gil, just so the guest stays on site, because they’re gonna leave really quick, they’re gonna just go away and think about the redirects. A lot of these website builders out there will build a pretty site that will require a booking widget or a non API connection to the PMS.

And now you’ve been taken off platform, all your SEOs in the garbage can basically, that you could have got no reward for you from Google. And you’ve lost your ability to, to pixel track ’em or anything like that. It’s like, where are we at with this? It’s like, sure, we’re selling you a website, but we want conversions, right?

We want people to stay. We want to call to action. Like, Hey, enter your stuff here. You know, whatever. We want to make sure that we get their information and, and we’re able to, it’s not about stealing the guest’s soul. It’s about being there for them to literally have the ability so they can get a, a wonderful staycation or vacation or whatever it is they’re gonna want to do.

And, and we can meet their needs. And we can’t do that with sloppy sites. We can’t do that with non API connections, um, you know, booking widgets and that kind of stuff. And without communication too, right? Like, so a guest will go to a website. How do we communicate with a guest on a website? You know, some kind of chat bot.

Sure. Okay, cool. At least we got something versus nothing. A an email link or just, just a, Hey, put your information in here, type of page, guess. No, that’s just kind of one sided. You’re just, I’m just giving you information to get ahold of me. I want real time communication, you know. So with

Gil: I’m ex I’m excited. Like, um, there’s, there’s some things that with Guesty, we actually, we host the checkout page. I forgot if we have, we, if we talked about that. But when you, when you, when you host the checkout pages, that gives us full visibility of when they land on your site and whether or not they convert it.

And one things I’m excited to work with you on down the road is really to put that, that Facebook pixel, that, um, that email pixel on there. So if you’re using Klaviyo or MailChimp or whatever, we can actually build campaigns for card abandonment. Um, that’s actually one of the things I really wanna work with you on, is if someone visits your site, very likely they may or may not check out that same day.

Um, so we wanna make sure that we, we are bringing that user back onto the website. We can do it through Facebook ads or Facebook retargeting ads. Um, but we can also do that through email campaigns as well too. So we can offer them coupon codes for X percent off if they were to check out in the next 24 hours.

Things that I had to learn through my world and eCommerce.

Owen : And, and honestly, Gil, not a lot of people get that. That’s a, that’s a, that’s a unique position of crafted stays, not just to prop you all up here, but I mean, honestly, I’ve been looking for a while. I’ve spent money and burned that money and just thrown away the collaborations that we’ve had with others because until I talked to somebody that knows what they’re talking about and that’s, I mean, I went, I searched pretty hard this last time for a good collaboration.

And I knew it wasn’t just gonna spend a little bit of money in the end of the day. So, you know, it’s gonna be more of a relationship of building these sites and, and building out this web presence. And it’s just, you want to be able to do that with somebody that actually gets it on an IT level that understands the whole soup behind it.

It’s super easy to get a can site from Guesty or Lodge Fire Hospitable or any of those others. And some of ’em work okay, but you’re gonna find the limitations really quickly. And if you’re truly trying like to really up your game, we know a lot of other, um, property management companies that did it right, and they’re getting 50% direct bookings at least.

And I mean, that’s at least, and that’s in a very short period of time. And that’s because they’ve got enough landing pages, enough, uh, stuff being directed towards their little engine. So what it does is. Your OTAs don’t have any availability because you’ve already filled up the slot.

Gil: that’s a good place to be.

Owen : Yep.

Gil: That’s a very good place to be. I’m excited about that. Um. So you mentioned some of the things that you’re investing into this year. We’re definitely gonna revamp your site in the coming weeks. What are the other things that you’re looking to kind of revamp and, and put a, a bit of energy on to, to choose that direct bookings this year?

Owen : You know, for direct bookings, we’re just, we’re focused on SEO this year in a big way. Um, multiple landing pages. Um, initially it’s gonna be, um, pages that are on, you know, our, our Northwest Pad site, but then we’re gonna also expand upon that with other boutique sites to direct people in. Um, also collaboration with like, uh, the municipalities sites and stuff like that.

Offering, um, upsells for like river rafting, excursions or, you know, hiking excursions, that kind of thing, right. On our site. Um, offering, you know, culinary, like our top picks for culinary experiences and, and, you know, brew pubs. Uh, it, we are dabbling with the idea of allowing, um, pre-sales for, you know, stuff inside the room.

Like we could leave them a six pack of some really good assorted IPA or, or a craft board, you know, a cheese spread, whatever, that kind of stuff we’re, we’re dabbling with those ideas again. And, um, it’s been mostly about the ability to, uh, e-commerce that correctly and to be able to track it and be able to deliver on it and be consistent on it.

And now we have a team that actually can do that prior to this. Uh. It was hit and miss a little bit. So you want a consistency. If you’re gonna go ahead and give somebody the, the full show, you want to be able to give ’em that consistently. ’cause it only takes one review that you didn’t do it right. So, you know, focusing on our linens has been the biggest thing at this point.

Making sure that part’s right and, uh, you know, the, the bed experience and you know, the coffee bar and that kind of stuff. So,

Gil: Yeah, ta Talk to me a little bit about your team. Um, it sounds like you’ve now gotten a place where you’re really trying to leverage the right resources in all the right places there. Um, I’m, I’m interested in particular, uh, how you’re able to kind of find some of your outsource talent as well, and what are some of the criteria that you looked at when you’re looking for specifically your, your social media manager?

Owen : We ended up having a va, one VA in the Philippines help us with communications, you know, 40 hours a week. And then we asked that VA to hire us another va. So we asked her to recruit and she knew people. So instead of spending seven bucks, 10 bucks an hour, 15 bucks an hour, we were able to get her for, you know, four or five bucks an hour.

And, but you know, they’re only used to getting two bucks an hour for the same job over there. So it was like, okay. I said, I’ll pay five bucks an hour American, you know, but we need to recruit ’em and train ’em and all this stuff and they need to only be working for us. And of course those are all the things you hope for at the end of the day.

And so we went through a little bit of growing pain with that, but we were able to get a collaboration of, you know, half a dozen VAs that work different shifts and it’s. We’re at the right size VA wise, for maybe 50 properties, not 25 properties. So we’ve got this robust team. We just need more properties

Gil: That’s not gonna be a problem

Owen : you know, kind of offset the, the overall cost of it, because we’re real, we’re real deep.

Um, but so we were able to, you know, recruit the same way a social media person through that. And we went through a couple of them in the process. And then of course, those people learned how to do social media, um, publishing, you know, for Americans versus for Filipinos it’s different. So, you know, they would be working on collaborations and they wouldn’t be necessarily collaborations that they, they know how to put the stuff together, but they don’t know the ramification of, like, at the time they didn’t know this.

You do this, you can get that much more, or you do that, you get that much more. And so we learned together. Over the last five years, how to do it right. And so, and of course AI’s been a big thing too, right? So now AI’s helping us write all that and make sure our collaborations are correct. So,

Gil: Interesting.

Owen : you know, you can make your content really quick with ai.

I,

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. It’s amazing how you’re able to kind of grow and all the learnings that you’ve done. Um, just seeing kind of the tactics that you use. They’re very mature, uh, for even a company that’s five years old even. Um, I’m very impressed with just even from the very beginning, you thinking about hiring a social media expert to really build out the foundation there.

We don’t hear that a lot in this industry.

Owen : you know, you, you hit that right on the button. Um, the first couple of years of idea, you know, maybe the first year was like, I need one of you guys to do this. You know, like my daughter, my wife, or somebody, you know. Do this part or I gotta do it, you know, and I realized really quick, I says, you know, it costs money to make money.

And I’ve, I’ve been in business since I was 24 years old doing something, you know, and, um, I was a contractor developer for, you know, 15, 18 years. you learn that it takes money to make money. Nothing’s given to you for free. And if you invest in people or you invest in systems and tools and processes and you know, collaborate with people, you’re gonna have a much better chance at building a successful business.

You have to have all the pieces put together to make it work. So it’s not just about buying properties. Now you can buy properties, you can give ’em to somebody like me to put ’em on the internet and make ’em happen. And there’s a model for that and it works really well. And then you can go do your, your great job at Microsoft or Amazon or wherever you’re at, and, you know, collect your fat W2.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, I love that, that model too. But when you’re at Amazon, I’m sitting on my boat and desolation sound working remotely for my starlink and I am sitting there and I’m, you know, watching the sunrise over the ocean and, and the mountains at the same time. And it’s like, okay, I’m here because I don’t have a W2 job because I either own or manage, you know, you know, 20, 25 properties and I have a wonderful team that I’ve built underneath me and sweat it out with them and I can talk to ’em every day.

I go to my office on my boat and I sit there and I talk to my team and we figure it out. And, you know, there’s no limitations to that. I don’t have to ask for time off, I just have to make sure that I did my job right before I take off. So that’s the game. At the end of the day, it’s like, you know, you can have the Fat W2 job, but you also can have.

Freedom if you do it right and build a business behind it. And, and that’s what we’ve done. So our model’s for freedom, it’s not for necessarily, I mean it’s, it’s building wealth, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s definitely for freedom. I.

Gil: Yeah, that’s, that’s very impressive. And it sounds like you have a, a very leadership mindset where you’re trying to grow with the team that you’re, that you have around you and you’re investing pretty heavily in there. And I find that a lot of the best leaders out there are also operators themselves.

You don’t necessarily have to be one or the other, but if you’re able to understand the mechanics behind how your business works, and you’re spending time with their team to make sure that their team is doing what they need to do, or you’re working them, working with them through those challenges, it helps you really grow a lot faster.

It helps you understand how you wanna recruit for the best talent there. Um, or even take things in house like you, like you did, um, that would probably be impossible if you weren’t paying attention and trying to learn what they were trying to do. And what, what levers were, were they pulling that had the greatest amount of.

About leverage.

Owen : Yeah, straight up, man. I mean, you couldn’t hit it better that way. I mean, it’s like we invest in our people. We compensate them fairly, we pay them on time. We, you know, our managers are, you know, in a growth mode, so they are on commission. Um, so that means they’re literally getting paid as a co-host, but boots on the ground co-host, we don’t have, co-hosts aren’t boots on the ground.

If so, that’s the only kind of co-host we have is somebody can actually, you know, meet a guest face to face. And then, uh, it’s just a big deal really to make sure your, your people are building their own business. And if they’re not building their own business, then, you know, they’re, they don’t feel fulfilled,

Gil: Yeah. Ly.

Owen : you know?

Gil: Oh, and, uh, we went through a lot of meat there. Um, I do wanna respect your time and also I want to kinda, uh, get a chance to ask you kind of our final questions there. Um, kind of switching gears a little bit, kinda to the first question there. Uh, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s doing something completely new?

Owen : Uh, for like this kind of business?

Gil: Any business.

Owen : Any business? Well, I built a lot of businesses, um, um, be dedicated, you know, and, and to build businesses. You know, don’t be afraid to fail. ’cause I’ve done a lot of failure too. I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded to get where I’m at today. So you have to stick your neck out there.

You have to build grit with it at the same time and get a thicker skin in the process. So my idea would be, you know, be dedicated. Don’t let somebody else build it for you. Build it yourself. Own your decisions. You know, there’s a lot there. I mean, there’s not one piece of mindset, but other than the fact is those are your dollars

Gil: Hmm.

Owen : and you don’t, you’re not rich by giving it all away.

You have to protect your money, you have to protect your people. I mean, there’s just so much one piece of mindset, man, that is such a broad question.

Gil: Yeah, it is. Um, but I think like what I’m trying to get, what I get out of what you, what you just said is really to have ownership over the business that you do have. Um,

Owen : ownership mentality. There you go. That’s the one piece of mindset. You’re not an employee. This is your business ownership mentality is a, is a state of mind. And when you’re brand new in business, you better have it. Otherwise your business will fail. If you treat your business like you’re an employee, you’re gonna be an employee for somebody else.

Gil: That’s true. Awesome. Owen. One’s, uh, what’s a, what’s a good book recommendation? What’s your, what’s one of your favorite books that you, you love to talk about or pass on to others?

Owen : A book.

Gil: Yeah.

Owen : Yeah, that’d be good. I haven’t read a book in a while, man. Yeah, yeah. No, I’ve been so busy writing my own, you know what I mean? So, um, you know, honestly, uh, if, if I was gonna say a good book to, to push onto others, I’d say the Holy Bible.

Gil: Nice.

Owen : So that’s where my brain’s at. You know, God’s kind of gave me my direction, so, in life.

So

Gil: I like that answer.

Owen : you didn’t expect that, man. But that’s, that’s the book I go by.

Gil: That’s, that’s one of the oldest,

Owen : Yeah.

Gil: uh, last, last question. Uh, what’s one piece of tactical advice that you would give to someone that’s either trying to get ’em into direct bookings or trying to amplify their direct bookings?

Owen : I would have to say, if you’re, if you’re trying to get into direct bookings, you want to make sure you have a good, simple site that’s going to showcase your properties well and that you can update very easily. you a booking widget’s not enough. You, you have to literally be able to have a site that somebody is sitting there with.

they don’t click away, you know, and so it can be simple, but it’s gotta keep your, your audience on the site and it has to be an easy conversion. We don’t have to have everything in one site. I would say that if your bookings are only your goal, okay, I just want to get more direct bookings. Very simple, very clean, and very easily, easily, uh, navigatable for the potential guests to connect to you and execute, put their payment information in, get a confirmation email of their booking.

And, and I think that’s, honestly, I think that’s where I would be at it with it, you know,

Gil: I,

Owen : that would be like, you know, it doesn’t take a bazillion dollars to do that. It takes a well crafted site to do that. And, and that’s something that would be very important. So direct bookings are about ease of conversion and not making it complicated on the guest.

So you should be able to navigate it. Well click some buttons. Autopopulate their payment information if possible, and know what they’re getting. And that’s very simple stuff there. When they’re coming to your site already, that’s what they’re looking to do. They’re not looking to browse, they’re not thinking about it.

They’re ready to execute. You make it hard on ’em, they’re not gonna execute.

Gil: Yeah, I, I see so many times where folks will build their own site on, on any of the words like website builders and they’ll want to try to talk about everything. Um, and I think the challenge with that is that you start to lead people away from what you intend them to do, which is click that book now button and book that stay there.

Um, so like for us, when we try to build our templates, we try to optimize it so that we know where the funnel is driving towards and we’re trying to drive people in towards the bottom of that funnel and not towards the left and right of that.

Owen : Exactly. Keep the funnel simple, but make sure the funnel connects all the way to a complete booking.

Gil: Yeah.

Owen : You know, so we, our funnels are lots of things that create a funnel, right? You know, I mean, it can be from, you know, uh, Instagram ad or just your regular posts on Instagram. It can be from a QR lab link on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or whatever, you know, and, and next thing you know, you’re, you’re at the site, you know, you’re on the page of the particular property.

How are we gonna keep ’em there? How are we gonna get ’em to execute it all the way through?

Gil: Yeah.

Owen : And then, okay, so they left. Cool. We’re tracking ’em. Now we know where they’re going and we’re gonna be there to help ’em when they’re ready to make that decision. But we’re gonna make sure we’re staying front and center in front of ’em with some, you know, some nice things that pop up in their feed.

So then we bring ’em back with, you know, MailChimp or whatever else. ’cause we already got some information on ’em, hopefully so, or, you know, Google ads or whatever. So.

Gil: I am excited. I’m excited to be partnering with you. I think you have the right mindset and you’re, you’re approaching things in, in the right way. Um, and it seems like you’ve already invested a lot of energy to just really understand how these funnels work. What technologies can you use, and how do you really try to optimize that as best as possible?

So, I’m excited to work with you, and I think we didn’t talk about this, but one of the interesting things that we start to do is, given that you do have many channels of, of leads coming in, you’re running ads, you have social, you have retargeting campaigns, you have different, even ads. You’re, you’re using, I, I’m guessing you’re using both Meta and Google, perhaps sequentially with each other, um, or in parallel actually. What I would love to do with you later on is really, really start to map out where that conversion is coming from and really trying to use all that data to figure out which influencers are driving the most traffic and most conversion for you, which ones are actually leading to bookings. Um, so those are some of the things that like I’m inspired to kind of like really help you find fine tune and figure out what that RO ROAS is and really optimize that.

Owen : Yeah. To me that’s a big deal. You know, we’ve watched some other players out there have like one or two cabins or properties or whatever you call it, you know, we call ’em cabins. They’re not all cabins. Some are states, you know, and, and all of a sudden they got 150,000 followers and their calendars are booked out for three years.

And yeah, they got a little bit of social media experience behind ’em, you know, and I’m like, wow, our property is so much cooler in their property, but yet they’re just slammed and they got high prices and. I’m like, okay, I’m the kind of guy that’s gonna throw everything at it to figure it out. Why am I not them at this point?

And what does it take to be there? So I’m more the, uh, persevere through the whole thing and figure it out kind of guy. Even if I don’t get it right the first time, I’ll get it right. Eventually it might cost me an extra 10 grand, but I’ll get it right. And we’ll get those bookings. So,

Gil: And you’ll learn. You’ll learn. You’ll learn the ingredients.

Owen : exactly. You know, we’ll learn the secret sauce and you will create some of your own and people will be following you too on it. So that’s, you know, at the, at the end of the day day, that’s, that’s kind of where we’re at. We also enjoy what we do. You know, it’s not like we’re just doing this for money. Um, it’s a, it’s a real good passion to make people happy and have them have these stays and to come out and be at our properties and experience what we’re doing.

It’s also, I. Good to know when we fail and so we can fix what we broke, you know, or, or where we, or, you know, our shortcomings are. You can’t make everybody happy and no matter what, everybody’s got emotion and stuff, and you gotta be part of that when they have it. So, um, like, you know, today we went hiking for two hours out in the mountains, in the Pacific Northwest before this podcast and, um, with our three dogs and made it back five minutes before the podcast started.

So, you know, it’s just, uh, the way it is, you know, we do what we, we do what we love to do, and so we wouldn’t be doing it any other way. That’s

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. You architected a, a great life.

Owen : Yeah.

Gil: Awesome, Owen. It was really good to have you on. I’m definitely gonna leave, uh, in the show notes, some links to, uh, some of your resources or some of some of where people can find you. Um, but it was really good to have you on the show and just really see how you’ve evolved over the last five years to get to where you are today, how you’ve grown, your social following, and some of the tactics that you’re thinking about as you continue to grow.

So I’m super excited to be partnering up with you.

Owen : Hey, thanks Gil. Really, really appreciate the, the invite here today and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and we look forward to the future collaboration and the website build as well.

Gil: Awesome. Thanks Owen. I, I.

Owen : Bye. Thanks.