Mike Bayer
Welcome to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast produced by the Vacation Rental Formula Business School and the creators of the THRIVE Training System. THRIVE is the key to harnessing the power of your property management team by creating a culture based on trust, hospitality and responsibility, all while fostering a vibrant work environment.

Mike Bayer
If you want to find out how you can have your team powered by hot dogs - Yes, I said hot dogs - then click on the link in the description of this episode to attend one of our weekly live information sessions. You have just found the way to make your business THRIVE.

Mike Bayer
This episode is brought to you by the kind sponsorship from Lodgify. Lodgify is your all-in-one platform for effortlessly managing and scaling your short-term rental business. From easily publishing your own bookable website to managing all your day-to-day tasks in one place. Whether you're a seasoned host or just starting out, Lodgify simplifies your journey to building a thriving vacation rental business with Lodgify.

Mike Bayer
Not only can you design a stunning website in minutes, but you can accept direct bookings and payments, sync your reservations across all major booking sites, and automate your workflows with tech-driven tools that help you save time while increasing your revenue. Its the smart way to grow your business, keep your guests satisfied and enjoy what you do. So don't wait to elevate your vacation rental business. Click on the link in the description of this episode and visit Lodgify.com today to start your free trial.

Mike Bayer
Now lets not delay, lets get started. Here's your host Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
In today's episode, I'm talking with Valerie Hawkins of Perdido Realty Vacations, about her 30+ years of managing properties and welcoming guests to the beautiful Perdido Key and Orange Beach areas of Florida and Alabama. She's sharing her wealth of experience working with changing technology, changing expectations, and a very competitive environment.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and as ever, I am super delighted to be back with you once again.

Heather Bayer
I've been coming to Gulf Shores, Alabama, in the wintertime for the last 15 years, enjoying the white sand beaches and the really laid-back pace of life. And the last three years, I've become officially a snowbird, meaning that we plant our wheels - since we're in an RV, we have wheels - and we stay for five months. It's been fabulous.

Heather Bayer
But this year is the first time I've actually gone out to talk to some of the great property management companies that line the roads to the beach. And a couple of weeks ago, we were so delighted to have staff from five of these companies attend a one-day workshop that our company put on in Orange Beach. One of these companies was Perdido Realty Vacations, and we welcomed their founder, Valerie Hawkins, along with her human resources manager, Katy Novak. Perdido Realty has been in operation since 1994, starting with three properties, and now with 150 in their inventory. It's always fascinating to talk to company founders who have been in the industry since before the OTAs took so much control, and to hear how they've moved with the times and embraced new technology and practices without losing the values and the connections with their community that they've built up over time. So we're going to hear all about this from Valerie. We're going to hear about how they've set up SOPs, standard operating procedures, that have allowed them to streamline their business. I'm going to talk about what she feels about the business today compared to what it was like way back then.

Heather Bayer
I'm super happy to have with me today, Valerie Hawkins of Perdido Realty Vacations, down here in the gorgeous Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Perdido Key area that cover the western end of the Florida Panhandle going into Alabama. So welcome, Valerie. Thank you so much for joining me.

Valerie Hawkins
I'm so happy to be here.

Heather Bayer
Well, this is just such a pleasure for me, because we only met relatively recently at VRMA in Orlando and......

Valerie Hawkins
We sort of bumped into each other, right?

Heather Bayer
We did, and we hit it off immediately, had so much in common and sat down and talked for ages. And I said, When I come down to Alabama, we're going to get together. We're going to have a coffee. And in fact, we went out to lunch. Then you and Katy came along to the workshop we did, and here we are now, and I'm coming out to see you next week; loads of connections now. I'm so loving that we did do this. We got together, and I'm getting to know you so much more.

Valerie Hawkins
Yeah, me too. I think for me, the excitement is I literally have an associate and a new friend who has been in the business as long as I have.

Heather Bayer
That's so interesting because we're going to talk about this. I'm relatively new to it compared to you. I didn't really start until the late 1990s. I didn't start my property management company until 2003. But it's like a little band of us that were there before Airbnb. Back in the day when we had signs on the lawns and classified ads in the local papers. Anyway, let's kick off. I want you to tell us about where it all started for you, back in 1994, right?

Valerie Hawkins
Yes, 1994. I'm originally from Savannah, Georgia, born and raised. My husband....., and I was a social worker for the Board of Education. My husband was in sales, and he had an amazing opportunity offered to sell condominiums in Gulf Shores, Gulf Shores Plantation, which was remarkable. US Capital Corporation, this huge corporation, he had to have psychological testing he went to South Carolina for... I mean, it was a big deal. They hired him on the spot. He came home and he said, What would you think about moving to Florida?

Valerie Hawkins
Now, this is a little tidbit about me. When I graduated from college, I wanted to travel. I had this wanderlust that was insatiable. So made a couple of trips with girlfriends up the East Coast. We didn't get much farther than that, and I went to work. So there wasn't a whole lot...., oh, we did go to South Florida once, my girlfriends and I.  So went to work, settled down. So there was no travel for me.

Valerie Hawkins
So moved to Florida. Alan and I had just married, and we had no children together. I mean, he had grown children, but we had no children together. I had my mom and my brother there, but I was old enough to leave town. And so literally, he was gone in a week, and I followed him a month later. I had to finish my job out and get ready to move. So we hit Florida.

Valerie Hawkins
Now, we were young and we were poor, and so he told me, Now look, I don't want you to be disappointed. I haven't been able to really find a great place to live. So get your mom to bring you down and we'll make it through.

Valerie Hawkins
So cross the Perdido Key Bridge..., Heather, you've been over it. I mean, I was speechless. I'm a beach girl anyway, and it was like I was home. And this little six-mile strip of beach was..., it was just magical. So we're following Alan, and... we met him across the bridge. We're following Alan to our lodging, I'm going to say. It was a beachfront condominium, brand new, completely furnished. I stepped off my back deck and I was on the beach. That's how I started here.

Heather Bayer
I love that. I love that story, come to the beach and stay forever.

Valerie Hawkins
For the first month, it was fine. I was shelling every morning walking on the beach, setting up my household. I'm very organized, everything has to be just right. Then what am I going to do? Alan was in Gulf Shores. He worked late hours. We settled on the Perdido Key side, the Florida side, because he couldn't find a place to live in Gulf Shores; that's pretty significant.

Valerie Hawkins
I had done social work for 10 years, and I loved what you said in the THRIVE seminar the other day. That, and this is so Heather. Heather said, I was sitting in a counseling session - because she's a psychologist. I was sitting in a counseling session, and this guy is just spewing all this stuff. I said to myself, Just get it together. So that's my personality, that's her personality, and I so related. And so she said, I want to do something happy. I want to serve people, but I want to do something happy. And that is exactly what happened to me. That Aha moment, whatever you want to call it, that's what we had. I got a real estate license. Everybody does that when they move to Florida, by the way.

Valerie Hawkins
So real estate license, I found out that I was really, really good at sales. One of our agents said...., well, that's getting a little ahead. But I realized that I could pigeonhole - that's what they teach in real estate - to pigeonhole people. They're this type, this type, this type. Slam all the doors as you're showing them properties and zero in on the one they want. Always keeping in mind that it wasn't about me, it was about them. I also realized that I needed to serve people in a certain way. Real estate was a good way. It really was.

Valerie Hawkins
But that wasn't quite enough for me. Alan left Gulf Shores Plantation. They had pretty much sold it out. He was coming back to Florida. We knew we wanted to stay in Florida. We had the opportunity to buy a name, Perdido Realty, from a little man who was probably in his 70s, and he had just shuttered the business. He had three vacation rentals. We had that opportunity, or, and this was a crossroads, we could go to work for RE/MAX as brokers and be our own, work for ourselves but through a franchise.

Valerie Hawkins
So Alan was the one, he's the risk taker. We agonized, I did, he didn't. On our final sit down, he said, I think I know that the only way we can go is to buy the company and develop it and make it our own. I said, Okay.

Valerie Hawkins
So, Mr. Al Meadows, we didn't buy the building, we just bought the name. It was a duplex owned by somebody on Perdido Key. But the important thing about Al Meadows for me was, when Alan and I sat down with him, he said, I chose you to buy this company. He had built it up. He had branch offices everywhere in Pensacola that as he aged, he closed. This was his last one on Perdido Key. He said, I've worked with you. You've always done the right thing, and I know that you will take care of my business. And he was right. So three properties, a hovel of a little duplex that was filthy, and $15,000 later that he financed for us over five years....

Heather Bayer
I love that!

Valerie Hawkins
....we own Perdido Realty.  And just from the onset... so there weren't that many people on Perdido Key back in 1994 living here permanently. There were a number of people working. Everything had on-site managers back then. Do you remember that?

Heather Bayer
Yes.

Valerie Hawkins
So mostly condominiums, so on-site managers, so Alan and I ventured into this business. I had some knowledge of property management just from my contact with managers. I had a cleaning service that I started at a manager's request one day when I was showing property. She had this horrible-looking big heavy man in a white stained T-shirt, and she was in the unit I was showing talking to him, oh, with a clipboard. And I said, Who's that? When he left, and she said, Oh, he has a cleaning service. He wants to clean for us. And I said, Are you going to hire him? She was German. And I said, Are you going to hire him? And she said, No. And I said, Well, what are you going to do? And she said, I don't know. Nobody's cleaning out here. I don't know what I'm going to do.

Valerie Hawkins
So guess what I did? I said, Well, I'll clean for you. So I started Dirt Busters in conjunction with the real estate. So I never stop moving, and I'm never happy with the quantity of work I'm doing. And so this was great. Hired the most amazing women ever, who taught me everything I would ever want to know about hotel cleaning. Oh, no, Val, you got to tuck those pillow cases, and you've got to make the bed this way, and you always tuck the sheet. They were fantastic. So I worked right along with them. I wanted to know everything.

Valerie Hawkins
We've got that. We've got the business. Al Meadows was living next door in the duplex. I told this story the other day. I always tell this story. He's no longer with us, so I would never tell it in public if he were still alive. But anyway, so I went in very early every morning because I was cleaning out files with roach poopoo on them everywhere and trying to get this place so that everybody felt comfortable working in it. So I opened the door. There was no alarm or anything. I opened the door. Al Meadows had an adjoining door to the next duplex where he lived. Every morning, I would walk in and it smelt like bacon and eggs, but through the door. So that morning, all of a sudden, the middle door swings open and I look and there's Al - he was quite a big man - in the doorway in his whitey-tightey!

Valerie Hawkins
And I went, Al, I'm so sorry. And he said, No, no, no. And he shut the door and we never said anything about it again. He said, and we did come in later and he said, I was still in bed and I was dreaming and I just thought somebody was breaking in. And I said, Okay.

Heather Bayer
It's a good job that that was all. There were so many different ways that could have gone.

Valerie Hawkins
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. And he didn't have one of those Calvin Klein bodies, let me tell you. They were some big, whitey-tighteys. But it was great. Everything was so good and fit. I felt so comfortable doing this and creating this. So Alan took the real estate side, and I had the vacation rental side, even though I sold real estate. And that's what got us through the first year, because I was selling real estate as well as running the company.

Valerie Hawkins
I had an employee that worked with me in Dirt Busters, who did bookkeeping for us. And so she came in. I called her and I said, Jean, I don't know what you're doing, but I really need you. And so Jean came in that first year. Jean is sitting right at that desk outside. She is still the gatekeeper. And we had a conversation today before this, so that I could get some of my timelines right. And it was so funny. You got two 70-year-old women standing out, trying to talk about 35 years ago and forward. And so it was hilarious because you forget some of your timeline. We went from.... there was nobody out here. There was one other vacation rental company that was a Century 21 office, and that was it.

Valerie Hawkins
Our first milestone was 25 units within the first six months, and we were doing everything on paper at that point. There was no computer program. We had a - Heather knows - a tape chart. It was about as big as my computer screen, and we drew lines with every month. We drew lines. We had one for every month, and we drew lines with markers and had our units down the side and the dates up here, and we would tape. We would literally use colored tape, right? Everybody had their own thing, but we used colored tape. That's how we did it for six months. Then a local software company, genius, Gene Brown was his name, and he developed INTech, which was a DOS-based  Vacation Rental Software program, and it had trust accounting. He was... and nobody has done it as well as he did it. I mean, honestly, we wish we had Gene's trust accounting. We had a manual tape chart, but we were able to book reservations on a computer. We had no credit cards, no credit cards. People had to write checks when they got....

Heather Bayer
... I remember it well. I remember that one, checks in the mail.

Valerie Hawkins
From that, we function that way. Jean and I were thinking today, two years, we functioned in that DOS system. Then he upgraded the program to online within the first five years, and we had our first website. My husband, with a computer geek that lived on a sailboat, literally, Ralph Bolden, developed our first website, and it was actually really nice.

Valerie Hawkins
My forward-thinking husband bought about six.... as soon as domains, what is that, 1996? No, 1998. I just pulled the paperwork this morning, because I still have it. He bought through Network Solutions, perdidokey.com and about five others that he's since given away to people. Anyway, so we own predidokey.com. We're on our fifth website. I'm working with ICND [InterCoastal Net Designs] now for our fifth website. So 25 units in the first six months, and then we hit the 50 mark after probably a year, year and a half. We couldn't remember exactly. And then our first big milestone was 10 years later, 2004. We were at 111 units.

Valerie Hawkins
[Hurricane] Ivan was a direct hit on Perdido Key and decimated it. We were out of business for two good years.

Heather Bayer
I didn't know that. We hear about Katrina and Michael and some of these, but I'd forgotten about Ivan.

Valerie Hawkins
I still get a feeling here when I talk about it, because this is what Alan and I did. This was the only business that we had. And so overnight, and I remember him saying, my mother was in a retirement community in North Pensacola, so we stayed with her. And in the middle of the night, all we had was a little broadband radio. And so he was listening to it, and he said, Oh, Val, there's not going to be anything left. It was a direct hit on us. It got us. And at that point, when you get that, any news, health news or that thing, you don't process, you don't hear. And I will tell you, it was at that point in our lives that some very good things happened. But literally, we had three properties, two we just manufactured by taking furniture that we found, because there were no walls left on buildings. We'd call an owner and say, Hey, do you mind if we take this furniture? Had a little unfurnished apartment across the bridge, furnished it. We were out of business.

Heather Bayer
I really had no idea. I'm looking now while you're talking, I'm just looking at pictures from Hurricane Ivan.

Valerie Hawkins
And you may see one with our Perdido Realty sign. We owned that building. There's someone walking down the middle of the street and our huge Perdido Realty sign on the side of our building. That's one of the pictures you'll frequently see.

Heather Bayer
All right. Oh, my goodness!

Valerie Hawkins
We operated from my home for about six months because we had to deal with returning money. I had... I completely moved internet, everything that we needed, people, everything, to my house. And that's what we did. We operated out of my home until we found a little hovel. You think of the funny things, but there was a little corner real estate office, but it had a lot of little compartments. They had a Pack & Ship place. Well, the Pack & Ship place also had the back part. We were in a big central room with one little office. There was a masseuse in the next office, and they walked straight through us to get to the masseuse. There was a tanning bed in the back closet room, where people would walk through and go to the tanning bed. We've got some stories about that. One of our realtors is facing that door, and so she hears all this stuff in there. Two girls going to a prom. You want to tan with your bra on or your bra off? This is in my office. So that was one.

Heather Bayer
So you say two years, you were out for two years.

Valerie Hawkins
Two years.

Heather Bayer
What happened? What happened after that? How did you recover?

Valerie Hawkins
I went into sales full-time. And we had Palacio [Condo Resort], we had several units in. That came back. Most buildings did not come back. So literally, we were back in real estate full-time for two years. And then the properties started coming back online. Maintained contact with our owners. I was their gofer for no money. I did whatever they needed me to do to help them get back online. So we kept most of our owners. They came back, if they didn't sell. So we survived. And the beautiful thing that happened is we had no power. And so we had a whole house generator that my husband put in two weeks before the hurricane, so we were sort of 'The Base'. But at night, there were no lights, so we grilled. We were... Community was so strong. Our neighbors, we met neighbors we'd never known. It was a beautiful experience, and we made the best of it. We came back with a vengeance, and it was the best summer we've ever had because everything was brand new, and we didn't have any maintenance that had to be done. So from those 111 units, we now are at 167.

Valerie Hawkins
You asked me about my vision in the very beginning. That has never changed. I wanted to be a local company. I wanted to be able to be anywhere I needed to be, or my staff needed to be within 5 to 10 minutes. We manage all of those units on a 6-mile strip of beach. Our focus is on customer service, and we work so hard, the housekeeping, maintenance end of it, owner communication, guest communication. We have people who walk through that door who have been staying with us for 20, 25 years, and now their kids are coming.

Heather Bayer
That is amazing. I love that. I speak quite often to a lady called Daniela Derin, and she runs a company in Marbella in Spain. She has people that come back year after year, and their families are now coming. The children are bringing their children. But she has this lovely story about a Canadian family that came to her place when she first started. It was just one Canadian family from this one little village in Ontario. She said this last year, 17 families came from that same little village.

Valerie Hawkins
Oh, my gosh.

Heather Bayer
Over the years, because people come back over and over again to what they know, they love, and they trust. That's something we were talking about in the workshop, is that a whole matter of trust? It's something that's getting lost, don't you think, along the way?

Valerie Hawkins
I do, and you brought us back in that workshop, you brought us back to the word and how to apply it. I thought, and I told you, 30 years, 35 now I guess, I never put trust in that perspective that you gave us. But it is the essence of what we do, and you took it even further. This is owners, guests, employees, and it's so critical. I love that you gave us that, and then you gave us ways to present it.

Valerie Hawkins
Guys, this was a one day, eight-hour workshop. Now, I was brain dead when I got out of there, because they never stopped. It was Mike and Heather, and I'm like, My God, how much more can they talk? Heather froze one time and said, You know what? It's the end of the day. I loved it. And I thought, I can't believe you've been doing this all day. But yes. So the trust. And we put a lot of trust in the people that we hire. We can turn that right around. The owners that we accept into our program. I think about the ones that really weren't worthy of my trust. Let me just say that. And that would be in all areas. So maybe that's something, another side of what we need to look at too, and some parameters for, Okay, how do we determine if they're going to be a trust risk?

Heather Bayer
Yes, exactly. I think I think just exploring that whole thing about how trust works, and particularly today, because we're becoming less trusting of everything. I think we have to just spend more time thinking about how we can build trust between us. But there are times, as you said with owners, where it doesn't work for some reason or another. We have to do that cut off, which I remember well. I never liked doing that part of it.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to take a short break just now to hear about our sponsor. We're going to be right back with more from this great interview in just a few moments.

Heather Bayer
Well, it is great to welcome Dennis Klett from Lodgify. And in this first section. I want to ask you, Dennis, what Lodgify actually is and how does it work?

Dennis Klett
Sure, Heather. Great to be here. Lodgify is an all-in-one software for vacation rentals or short-term rentals. It's essentially everything you need to manage and grow your vacation rental business. In other words, it helps you to get more bookings and save time. Our main customers are private individuals and small property managers, so it's a software really suited to all kinds of sizes. So no matter whether you have one apartment or 20 or above apartments, we would be the great fit for you.

Dennis Klett
Our software has three main modules. The first one would be a site builder, which allows you to easily build your own bookable website to generate more direct bookings, which is great just to save on commissions. Then it's a channel manager which gets you connected to all major booking platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Google Vacation Rentals. And that really ensures that your calendar is always up-to-date and prices and your content is always up-to-date on all those different booking channels.

Dennis Klett
And then it's a property management system, or in other words, a reservation system. And that's like a centralized place where you manage all those incoming bookings from all those different types of channels. And that system really helps you to automate the management of these bookings to save you time. So it has a centralized calendar. It has tools to automate your messaging, to automate your payment collection, including installment payments. It allows you to send a quote, automate the authorization of damage deposits and managing tasks. And all of that we also have in a native mobile app, so you can manage your entire short term rental business from your fingertips. And we're continuously adding more products and features on top of this. We just recently launched our dynamic pricing or revenue management tool, which allows you to intelligently price your nights so you can make the most revenue off your property. That's what really Lodgify is about in a nutshell.

Heather Bayer
That's great. Thank you.

Heather Bayer
Hey, Valerie, let's just shift to marketing because I remember way, way back when we did our marketing up in Ontario, we had a paper catalog, and you'd advertise in the paper catalog.

Valerie Hawkins
Oh, we did, too.

Heather Bayer
And we'd have this tiny little square that you could put one grainy photo, one grainy black and white photo, and about 25 words. So you said you're a 3BDR, 1BR for bathroom, view. That's all you had. That's all you had to....

Valerie Hawkins
....Oh, yeah. We did on... I forget what that program was back there, back then. Publisher! I did a brochure. I think we had 15 or 16 properties, I did a brochure of our properties, no descriptions or anything, but just the BR, 2BR, BA, and we would mail it out to - remember, how did we book reservations? We got a phone call. Somebody called in and said, Hey, a friend of mine - most of it was a referral, too. Then the Beach Guide, somebody got the wild idea of doing a magazine that they put in grocery stores, and we paid to have our properties listed. And we got a lot of referrals from the Beach Guide. So that's how my advertising evolved. You're so busy in the very beginning. We've talked about this, too. You're so busy doing the day-to-day and figuring things out. How should I do this? How should I do that? I know we're going to talk about that, too. But you lose sight of the big picture. And I'm a big picture person, and we had no networking.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly.

Valerie Hawkins
I had nobody to talk to. Nobody. I mean, nobody. It was like, make it up as you go. That was the other thing. Anyway, I think that from a marketing standpoint, if you're talking about marketing now, then and now, it is just like, I mean, it makes me weak now. I also want to say that once we ditched INTech and went with LiveRez, and that was in 2016, that was their heyday, 2015. That was LiveRez's heyday. You got a website, integrated software that was relatively good software for its time, and they had their own marketing team. So we paid for that. So they are the ones who brought me into the more sophisticated...., Oh, this is what's been going on, and this is why that company in Alabama is getting all the bookings. Oh, okay. So let's just follow through on that. And we were doing SEO, but we had a person doing it who was ineffective. And now our organic listing is so high because I have somebody tweaking my quick keywords. I have a marketing person who does all of that. So there There you go.

Valerie Hawkins
Are you still with LiveRez?

Valerie Hawkins
No. After Inhabit moved in, LiveRez, the people made LiveRez. This was a group of young professionals that were in it to make their partner successful. And there was never a doubt. You talk about trust. When any time you have an acquisition, people just go away, the culture goes away, and that's exactly what happened. And it's legacy software. There was nobody left. They had one or two people, but they couldn't handle everything. Legacy software. So they didn't know how to work the platform. Right? To work on the platform. So things were breaking right and left.

Valerie Hawkins
Okay, so are we going to go from being a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond? And so we're both with Track [PMS] now. That would be the little fish in the big pond. And the software is very sophisticated. I did it for the pricing tool. I like that, that is an option because we do dynamic pricing, but I work with a revenue manager who will work with me on manual. I don't use a pricing company to do that.

Heather Bayer
Okay. Yeah. Sort of the way we were going, I think, about the time that we sold our company, that we were definitely looking at alternative property management systems, and Track was way, way out there in front. And just because of what was incorporated, I mean, we know that you can't have any one company that will do absolutely everything perfectly.

Valerie Hawkins
No. I have always said that. We do our work arounds because we've been doing it for so long. Jean - they've made changes in Track because of Jean - Jean is brilliant when it comes to trust accounting. She's been doing it for 35 years, if you can imagine. So they are effective, and I needed their pricing tool. That was ultimately why we signed with them. The onboarding was great. Support can be a little slow, but if you look at the big picture, we don't have any problems with Track.

Heather Bayer
There's been so much technology come on board over the last 30 years. What were the game changers for you over time and what tech are you using now?

Valerie Hawkins
Obviously, LiveRez changed everything. Every aspect of this company was changed. Our pricing, the networking. One of the things that, I don't know if you call it my tech stack, but EOS [Entrepreneurs Operating System], that was also [Client] Advisory Board 5 with LiveRez. And Brooke Pfautz was the Vice President of LiveRez at the time, and AB5 had a retreat, the same retreat where I met Travis [Wilburn] in Park City, UT. And so he brought in, via Zoom, but he brought in one of the key, I don't know if it was a founder of EOS, but it was close. And so we had a Zoom meeting with him. And then after that, he brought in Mark, I can't remember his last name, from Culture Index. And so he started putting together a picture of...., oh, and he was using the EOS model and telling us that he was using the EOS model in our group meetings, which was so cool because we got to see it.

Valerie Hawkins
Then we had the option when we left there to pay for the course and go through it, which is what I did. Because if there was one fail that I had, it was in team management, because I tended to give people full reign and not have a business structure, an accountability structure.

Valerie Hawkins
I would probably do it a little differently with what I know now. I would definitely put some sort.... in the upstart, it's never too early. It's costly, and you don't always have that money when you start up. We didn't. But I think it is so important I didn't have core values in place. Remember, no networking to talk to other people, and I don't have a business degree. That came from EOS. Within one year, this company totally transformed.

Heather Bayer
That is so interesting. I'm hearing so many people talking about EOS right now.

Valerie Hawkins
It's very popular now. I'm noticing. I think it's because it brings everything into perspective. The other thing is HR. Now, EOS has the… You can either do… Some people use Culture Index and some use PI. I've used both. They're similar. I know I took the course in Culture Index, so I'm more comfortable with it, but I think they say about the same thing. So you have got to have some structure for hiring.

Valerie Hawkins
Now, I was lucky enough to find Katy. I hired her as a front desk person She was in college and needed a full-time job, but with her school days off. Katy's majoring in HR. So Katy came in and I realized right away her potential. With her coursework and what she's doing, she basically has structured an interviewing process that is magic. The people she's hiring are without Culture Index or PI. I know this is a one-off, but this is where we've ended up. With our EOS, and it may be the EOS and the fact that we really do have core values and principles. They have changed in 10 years because after COVID, I started with a whole new staff, entire new staff, except for Jean.

Valerie Hawkins
And so we went from... I mean, how do you go from a culture of all women over 50, which is what I had, to a whole room of 30-somethings? It's totally different. And that, too, has transformed the company, because I rely on them, old school. So how about your every job you've had? You give 100%, if you are sick and you can still walk and talk, you go to work. And that's just not the way it is now. And so we have to adapt, not to the point that it affects our businesses, a detriment to our businesses, but we have to write procedures differently than we did.

Heather Bayer
So I want to talk about that writing of procedures.

Valerie Hawkins
Yes, I know.

Heather Bayer
Because that's something that we've talked about over the last few months is standard operating procedures and the fact that you now see them as a really solid foundation for your business. I've talked to a lot of people who've said, Well, I don't really understand what these are and why should we have them? So I thought you would be a great person just to put that in a nutshell about the importance of an SOP.

Valerie Hawkins
Yes. So thinking back, I think I always had SOPs, but they were written as a checklist. Right? And none of them connected. There was no continuity from housekeeping to maintenance to guest services, because some of those work. Now, I told you I was big picture. So when Scarlett came in after COVID, in guest services, immediately, almost immediately, she was promoted to guest services manager. Her personality is just... She's a people handler.

Valerie Hawkins
We had a consultant who was pushing her to write SOPs, and that's when it started. She took it on. The first one I read, I went, Oh, we've been missing the boat here, haven't we? And I sent them all to you. They're very detailed, but they're readable and they're workable. When you read it, some are rules, some are actual procedures, and whatever else is in there. I've read them all, but I don't remember them. That's so totally not my area. I think when we talked earlier, I said, I wasn't the best person to be doing this. We worked together on some. She knew nothing about housekeeping. I know everything about housekeeping. She and I, I would give her the checklist and everything I had, and then she would start it, and then she'd say, But now I have questions.

Valerie Hawkins
Then we would read through them together, and I'd go, No, that's not quite right. We need a different order, or we need another practice for what happens for this. We live by them. Oh, my God. She changes them every week. Something happens every week. Absenteeism, all of that is in there. Employees, a vacation, it's all in there. Now, we have a manual also. But these SOPs, if she has somebody that isn't doing what they're supposed to do, then she refers to the SOP and says, Now, remember, if you can't make your shift for a day, you're supposed to contact the other two people who may be off to see if they can cover for you. So all of that is in there. And there's no question.

Heather Bayer
This is something that we were just beginning to put together when we sold our business, a business very similar to yours, it was a family business started out in the early 2000s. The first hire that we took on is still with the business now, 20 years later. And she has so much in her head that when we were taking on new staff, then we would hand them over to Sandra for a couple of days, take them through the property management system, take them through the booking system, the reservation system, and she would do all that. And then we realized that, okay, so what happens if Sandra is not here? She's got all this in her head, and there is no one else who can do it like she can. So that's when we began that process of putting everything down and making it into a roadmap, into a blueprint for the business.

Valerie Hawkins
Because it's consistency. Jean told me when we started the SOP process. And Scarlett, she said, I walked in here and you showed me everything, but I didn't really know what I was supposed to do, so I just made it up. And that's how employees feel when they walk in, if you can't hand them the manual.

Valerie Hawkins
She makes it personal. She goes online and gets these stupid... they're like gifs, almost. And she pastes that on there and she prints out with which manual it is, Front Desk Manual, and she's got their personal name on the bottom of it. It's a big deal. For days, they sit there while they're not busy and read through that manual. Then she'll quiz them every week. Top quiz.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that is brilliant. We're getting a little bit close to our time here, and there's a couple of questions I still have that I want to pose to you. One is about community involvement, because I know ever since you first started, you've been involved and active in the community. How important is that to you and to the company culture?

Valerie Hawkins
Well, for me, I grew up with Perdido Realty. There were only three or four condominium buildings when we got here. I have watched it grow. I'm very protective of it. I don't involve myself in politics, but I follow it. If we need to support a cause, we do. I'm very involved in our local chamber because there, most of the money allotted for a chamber goes to the Pensacola Chamber, not the Perdido Key Chamber. We support large events financially, and we always have a staff member.... right now, one of our realtors is on the board of directors of the chamber. If I'm called to help, then I do it.

Valerie Hawkins
One thing that I would like to do is, I'd like for my team to be more proactive in beach cleanup, things like that. Unfortunately, our staff is so small, and we work weekends, which is when it usually happens. We're looking for ways that we can help. All of our furniture and things that owners don't want, we give to the local redemption center, which is 100% volunteer, and every penny goes into backpacks with food for schools for children who need it.

Heather Bayer
I love that.

Valerie Hawkins
They take them home.

Heather Bayer
Love that. We were running a panel yesterday on sustainability and sustainability initiatives, and that was one of the initiatives, was about volunteering. It was about giving back to the community. So loving that.

Heather Bayer
Valerie, when you look back, what have you been most proud of in your 30 year plus journey?

Valerie Hawkins
Oh my gosh. That I have made it this far, and that I still... My claim to fame is, I run rings around my 35-somethings, they tell me all the time. And that the legacy, the reputation that we have built, it was my vision, and we are fulfilling it. We are always working, striving, to be better. What more can we do? And I'm proud. I'm just so proud that to see something go from the ground up. I have built something that is important.

Heather Bayer
You're a member of the 100 Collection. What does that mean to you? Because that means that you have achieved some really, really high standards, and they are picky.

Valerie Hawkins
They really are. Travis Wilburn, the founder, the creator, I have to say that because Travis had this concept in his head eight years ago, maybe. Or maybe it was only, yeah, probably eight years ago. He started, and you'll hear, because I know that you two are talking, but he just has these ideas. And so it started out as standardization, because that is one of the things that he was looking for. But then it evolved into people who go the extra mile for safety, quality, it doesn't have to be luxury, it just has to be the best of what it is. Maintenance, just people who do better, who want to present a product like the Michelin five-star program. It's what it was fashioned after for Vacation Rentals.

Valerie Hawkins
The one thing that he said, it's the trust. Because one thing he said to us when he finally pulled it all together was, I want someone to look at this logo and know that everything is going to be okay and more than they expected. That is that trust, so there you go, that pulls it all together.

Heather Bayer
Well, it really does. It does. And you said a couple of things just in this last minute or so, trust, quality, standards. A lot of this industry seems to be shifting a little bit away from that.

Valerie Hawkins
And the people. I have to say, I'm disappointed that we've moved into technology to the point that there's very little personal contact, not me, because we still answer the phone. There's no auto-attended greeting on our phone. Our people still check in at our front desk. They can leave if we have keyless for the unit, then if it's on there, then they can check out that way. But we want them.... We are people. We want to know the people. We want the people to know us. That's huge when you talk about trust.

Valerie Hawkins
So somebody's booking a reservation online, they get an automated, Okay, here are your instructions, and then they get one right before that says, Okay, let's go over this again. And then they get, It's four o'clock. Your unit is now ready. Here's your code to go open the door. I have a real problem with that. And it's me. I know that it works. And I know logistically, for some people, it has to be, for some people, just with distance. You can't. You have to. But there are other ways to make it more personal.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, indeed. We have come up to our time, Valerie. I can't believe this has gone so fast.

Valerie Hawkins
Well, I talk a lot.

Heather Bayer
We'll be talking again soon. But I just want to thank you so much for sharing this journey with us and wishing you every success for wherever the journey continues to take you.

Valerie Hawkins
It has been so much fun.

Heather Bayer
From this conversation, one thing I really got was about your team, Jean, who's been there with you from the very beginning, and then all the way through to Scarlett and Katy, who are a new generation of people.

Valerie Hawkins
They are.

Heather Bayer
But they all come together to deliver to Perdido Realty, the soul of your company, and you are at the heart of that. So congratulations to all that. And I'm so looking forward to working with you and your team as we go ahead with THRIVE.

Valerie Hawkins
I can't wait. I mean, you're going to do great things. I want to be a part of that.

Heather Bayer
Well, you definitely will be. Valerie, thank you.

Valerie Hawkins
We will definitely reap the benefit.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much.

Valerie Hawkins
Thank you, Heather. Bye

Heather Bayer
Thank you, Valerie. That was such a great conversation. I'm really enjoying these discussions I'm having with these business owners, to hear how they have grown and developed and met all the challenges that they are facing with changes in technology, in particular, changes in economies, and changes in guest expectations, and owner expectations, of course.

Heather Bayer
So we're going to be continuing to do this. I've got a couple more interviews in the pipeline with other property managers down here in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. If you're a property manager and you have seen changes - of course you have. If you have a story to tell and you want to share that with our audience, I would love to hear from you. Please send me an email at heather@vacationrentalformula.com, and I will get back to you, and perhaps we can arrange to schedule a chat.

Heather Bayer
That's it for this week. It's been another great time talking about our industry, and I look forward to many more to come. Thank you.

Mike Bayer
We hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember, if you want more information about the THRIVE training system you need to attend one of our weekly live information sessions. Click on the link in the description to secure your spot. THRIVE is the perfect training to supercharge your existing property management team and onboard your employees in the best way possible.

Mike Bayer
This episode was brought to you by Lodgify, the all-in-one solution that will help you start, manage and grow your short-term rental business. Click the link in the episode description or visit Lodgify.com today to start your free trial.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week..

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