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.

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.

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, 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. It's 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.

Now let's not delay. Let's get started. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

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Heather Bayer:

In this episode, I'm talking to Kirsten King, the co founder of Curate Telluride.

Kirsten founded and managed a large property management company in Montana called Big Sky Vacation Rentals and sold it a few years ago. I'm really interested in why she is back in the business and in a smaller way, but making a huge difference in her community.

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. So I'm still on the comedown, from my trip to Banff and the CanStays Rental Alliance Conference.

It was such a terrific few days and I met so many people. I heard so many stories and just enjoyed every second of my time there. And I've said this before, but I'm probably going to say it every week for the next few weeks and maybe longer, but real kudos to Catherine Ratcliffe for having the idea and for running with it.

Mike and I did a presentation at the event on trust. And because trust is a core of our THRIVE learning platform, it's one of the principles which are trust, hospitality and responsibility in a vibrant environment. So we talk about those three principles and how to create that vibrant environment amongst the team so that everybody is working on this, on the same platform, if you like. Everybody is creating trust, is meeting their responsibilities and delivering hospitality in the same way. They're all singing from the same hymn sheet, if you like.

So we were doing this presentation on trust and when I was putting it together, I thought I wanted to cover all the key stakeholders that we collectively deal with on a day-to-day basis, the guests, the owners, the team, and the community. So I wanted a case study to share. A property management company that was really focused on community involvement and I came across Curate Telluride. And this is a new company started by Kevin Jones and Kirsten King. Kevin was a former owner of Latitude 38 Vacation Rentals in Telluride. Kirsten was the founder and former owner of Big Sky Vacation Rentals in Big Sky, Montana. And both of them having sold their companies after a couple of years decided they just had not had enough of this business, so wanted to start again and do something different. So they co-founded Curate Telluride. which has a real focus on community and on giving back to the community and creating partnerships with local businesses and local organizations and really making their company part of the fabric of their community.

And I was fascinated by this. As I say, I used it as a case study in the presentation we did, encouraging everybody to go to the curatetelluride.com website and take a look at the site itself. Look at the story that they are telling and just see how you could incorporate some of this into your own company.

So naturally, I wanted to invite one of them onto the show to talk about why they'd gone in this direction and the value that they are giving back to the community and also the value that they're giving to themselves and their team as well.

Kirsten King is joining me today and I want to move straight on over to the interview so that she can share her story.

I am super delighted to have with me today Kirsten King from Curate Telluride. I'm amazed we haven't met, maybe we probably have met in person, Kirsten. It would have been one of those fleeting meetings in a conference, at a women's conference, or at VRMA or something like that. So it is really great to be able to sit down and have this really quality time with you over the next 30 to 40 minutes.

Thank you so much for joining me.

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Kirsten King:

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here today, Heather. Thank you so much.

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Heather Bayer:

While we've been putting together the THRIVE program, which is a learning system for property management companies, we have been talking about trust, hospitality, responsibility in a vibrant environment and talking about our four key stakeholders, which are the guests, the owners, the team, and the community.

And when I was researching 'community', I came across Curate Telluride and you really focus on the community. So that's really the core of this discussion to bring to our listeners, the way that you do that focusing and how you partner with people in your local community. But first of all, Curate Telluride is not your first rodeo, so I'd love you to tell us about your journey in the vacation rental space and coming up to where you are now.

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Kirsten King:

Yeah. We, up until 2008, lived in Minneapolis. We always said people are always asking me, how did you get to Big Sky? And I said we had a midlife crisis, luckily together, and ended up moving our family out to Big Sky. I started my career in real estate, but really quickly in 2008, realized that maybe this wasn't going to be a fantastic source of income, giving what was going on with the economy. We had a small condo there and we really quickly learned that it probably was going to be going back to the bank. We had a terrible mortgage on it. If we couldn't do something with that property. And Airbnb wasn't even around. I threw it out on an OTA to see what would happen, and we, in an unbelievable way, rented about 200 nights that first year in a community that really has about 120 desirable nights. It got my wheels spinning a little bit. I was still trying to sell real estate. Had a lot of agents coming to me saying, hey you're doing such a great job with this property, would you be interested in taking another? And that was really the genesis of Big Sky Vacation Rentals, which we grew over a 10 year period to 150 luxury homes under management. We sold it in 2020, and honestly I spent a couple of years doing hospitality consulting, doing some really interesting things like running Astronaut Village for Blue Origin down in West Texas and meeting some interesting people. But the reality is the vacation rental space has some amazing professionals, and I've just really missed those relationships and I knew that what we had done with Big Sky Vacation Rentals.

Really incredible, wasn't really focusing on the things that I wanted to be focused on. I had a good friend in Telluride who had a very similar company called Latitude 38. He sold that company in 2021. We've known each other since 2014 - old LiveRez partners - and we just decided that we were going to start again with a new focus and something that really fed our passion.

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Heather Bayer:

We're going to come back to this craziness of starting again after all those years in one company. But I just want to go back just a little bit to what you just said about running Astronaut Village and Blue Origin. Just give us a bit more information on what that was about.

Kirsten King:

Yeah, I got selected to be part of a team that was in essence responsible for everything that happened during launches as it relates to hospitality. So I was actually in the village where the astronauts would stay pre- launch and post- launch and responsible for making sure that their plus ones had a great time while the astronauts were in the training sessions.

It's making sure food and beverage was moving smoothly. All the housekeeping was taken care of. It sounds really glamorous. It was typical hospitality, walking in boots across dusty rocks for 12 hours a day, making sure everything was amazing and great for people.

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Heather Bayer:

It just sounds so fascinating. And yeah, it just really caught my attention. So I'm now coming back to the big question. Why? I think you said that, why you got back into it. But you're in a, we were always in Telluride. How did you get to Telluride?

I had to look Telluride up on a map. And I thought I lived in parts of England that were really out in the boonies. But this one is there.

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Kirsten King:

Yes, it's very much a destination resort. That is, Big Sky where I started my first company also very out in the boonies, if you want to say, it's a midway point between Bozeman and West Yellowstone, 45 minutes from Yellowstone National Park, but very much a destination-type resort that people... it's on people's bucket list.

Telluride, I think is another bucket list place. It's an amazingly beautiful box canyon, and Kevin, actually his first company Latitude 38, was in Telluride. He's a longtime Telluride local. And it made sense. He didn't have as long of a non-compete as I did. And it just made sense to go there first. We knew the community. He has a lot of connections there. And we're, passionate about small towns, though it's not the town I live in full-time, I understand the issues facing resort communities and just the challenges that everyone has with making sure things are amazing for all the stakeholders, owners, guests, businesses in the area.

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Heather Bayer:

Tell me a little bit about the company, how many properties do you manage and what's the competition in the area?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah, because we're new, we launched in November, we have 20 homes approximately under management. We're actually pretty pleased with that progress to go from 0 to 20 organically in that amount of time, seems like a big accomplishment for us. There' s quite a few companies in town, I would say, in the neighborhood of around eight that are, have significant numbers of properties. So it is a market that has a lot of competition, but it's very geographically small. So unlike Orlando, where you're trying to stand out amongst a huge radius geographically and so many companies, it does make it a little bit easier. Just like Big Sky was very geographically located.

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Heather Bayer:

What sets you apart? Because, I've been there as a property manager when I started, although that was back in 2003, there were half a dozen really established companies. And I remember the challenges of getting your foot in the door and saying, we are different come to us.

And I've told this story a lot, my, my first client was my sister, and then it was the guy down the road who said, okay, I'll give you my property to manage, but I don't want you to charge me anything for the first year. I want you to prove yourself. And we did that. And then it [Big Sky] grew to 20 in four months compared to my probably 20 in the first two years for us. I think it's a remarkable achievement. So what is setting you apart?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah it's really interesting because we had, talked quite about a bit about the concept of partnering with homeowners to be part of giving back to the community. And as part of our agreement with homeowners, our rental management agreement. We have requested that homeowners donate 1 percent of their rental revenue or 7 nights of lodging.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. And I really did wonder a little bit, whether it was going to cause an opposition and whether we would end up having people say I just, we don't want to work with you because of this piece of the contract. And it's actually been, astoundingly, it's been the opposite.

It's been. People excited about what we're doing. I just was talking to a homeowner yesterday, and she said, really, ultimately, it came down to at the final decision came around that your values aligned with our values. We're very passionate about the town. You own a few homes grew up in the area and just care about the community.

And so what you guys are doing really interesting to us. So I think it does set us apart. Our goal here is not to be the largest, company in town, we actually, I think would like to top out around 50, which most people, have endless growth in mind. But in this case, our goal is really to showcase what a vacation rental can do in a local community for good. We want to be a positive force, and we're looking for owners who share our vision. We're not looking for everybody. And I think focusing on that niche has allowed us to have a story that's different from our competitors. We're really excited about that.

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Heather Bayer:

I love that. I talked to Rachel Parsons from New Forest Escapes in the UK on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and her focus is sustainability. And she was talking exactly the same language as you. She wants to partner with owners who share those same sustainable values. Do you think this is the way that we are perhaps going in entrepreneurship in this industry?

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Kirsten King:

I think you definitely see the growth in the interest of, B-Corporations, people trying to do things to give back. Rent Responsibly talks a lot about initiatives related to this. I think there is a push in the industry, because it's so many communities and Telluride certainly is not immune to Regulation and that's something Kevin stays very on top of and involved in, given that he's local. But, most or a lot of communities are facing opposition to short-term rentals. And I think that the more that owners of short-term rental companies are getting involved in the community, from a governance standpoint, and being really connected with politically what's going on and having a voice that they, hopefully, through the good. vacation rental companies do, and if that is showcased, then we can start to turn the tide on the perception that a lot of community members have.

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah, I just spent three days in Banff at the CanStays Rental Alliance Conference, which is the first time there's been an event that is focused on the Canadian market. And it was very skewed towards advocacy. To the point where the opening panel was the the ex-leader of the Conservative Party in Canada, he's still a federal MP, and there was a 20-year MP from the north, from Grand Prairie, Alberta, which is way north, and Nathan Rotman was there from Airbnb. And the message was, you've got to get your seat at the table and to get into the community. And just last week, I interviewed a property manager, my most northern property manager from Whitehorse in the Yukon. And his version of getting a seat at the table is becoming the chair of the housing committee.

And in this panel they said, you've got to be there. And there's that old saying that, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu!

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Kirsten King:

Yeah, as an example in Big Sky, we have the Big Sky Housing Trust. We're a little behind where a lot of resort communities are in terms of affordable housing, workforce housing. But I often was having conversations with the executive director of that organization, just bouncing ideas. I wasn't on the board, but he would come to me and say, hey, Kirsten, what do you think about this? I think there's a real opportunity for organizations like that to partner with STR companies, just to have those conversations because the reality was, there was a lot of conversations I had with homeowners who were coming to us at Big Sky Vacation Rentals looking for a property manager. And I would look at the situation where their property was located, the kind of income that I thought that property could generate and realize that, in the long run, this is going to be a way better long-term rental than short-term rental. I turn those properties right over to Big Sky Housing Trust to have a conversation. So I think there is a real opportunity to open some doors and to not be seen as adversaries.

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Heather Bayer:

Yes, exactly. And that was the entire message from the three days in Banff. It really opened my eyes, inspired me. It really inspired me to get more involved in the advocacy side of the business. And yeah, I'm talking a lot about it at the moment, just trying to gee people up and saying, just get involved.

You've talked about on your website, you talk about partnerships and community partnerships. Can you share how these partnerships come about? How do you build those partnerships and integrate them into your business model?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah, and obviously, because we started in November, we're in infancy stages of this. We have a lot of ideas moving forward. But the first piece of it for us is around the 1 percent, because we're giving 1 percent of our commission revenue in addition to the 1 percent of the homeowner revenue that they generate to local nonprofits. We decided that each ski market really 2 seasons. You've got the winter season and the summer season. So we will be selecting 2 nonprofits for each of those seasons to donate that money to. And for the first 2 nonprofits, we chose the Telluride Humane Society and we chose TAS, which stands for Telluride Adaptive Sports, which gives people with differing abilities, opportunities to get out on the mountain. And those are two organizations that were just dear to us.

Kevin has a rescue dog from the Humane Society and has a relationship with that person. They're doing a lot of good because it's a total '100% supported by donations' organization. So that's where we started with the 1%.

We also have, I mentioned the lodging nights. There was a survey done in Telluride that really identified that the nonprofits had a need for over 1000 nights of lodging to fulfill their missions across the community, whether that be visiting artists, speakers at the school, just bringing people into the community for a variety of purposes. And you can imagine in a resort community, renting lodging is incredibly expensive. And so we have owners that chose instead of 1 percent to give 7 nights of lodging. The first partner we have is Mountain Film in May. We were able to match them with a house, and provide them with 5 nights of lodging at no cost. We're paying that cleaning fee and they're thrilled because they can put people in that home during that event and save all of that money organizationally. So that is our hope to grow in that area, in those 2 ways, primarily will be through donations local nonprofits and then nights of lodging to help them with their missions.

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Heather Bayer:

So I'm imagining it's not simply donating. That you work with the partners and go beyond that. And, I love the idea of the humane society. I have a rescue dog from Egypt, in fact, and we work with that rescue center in Toronto and support them in every way that we possibly can to bring some of these animals not Egypt now, because in fact we're banned from bringing them in from these countries. But, there is more than just donation, right?

Kirsten King:

Yeah, and this is something I think we'll probably touch on later with staffing, but this is, really important to us that, the members of our team be involved locally, either, whether it be in different governance, whether it be volunteering, whether it be coaching the local team. Involved in organizations like this, we'll get to a point where we actually give paid days off to be able to volunteer and be involved in those organizations, because it is more than just writing a check. We haven't done as much of this as I would like to, but we do have a plan around social media. Promoting these organizations, cross promotion of these nonprofits so that people are aware. We also have these organizations available on our checkout page in the checkout process to our guests that they can see these are 2 organizations that we're supporting and they're able to add a small donation to their booking if they choose to we're also promoting the organizations in the properties themselves, letting people know that the homeowner is generously, as is our company, to these organizations. There's a QR code and the ability for them to connect with a campaign if they would like to make a donation.

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Heather Bayer:

I love that, that collaboration that brings in the guests, so you're bringing the owners, you're bringing in the guests and benefiting the community. So you know how does, how do these collaborations actually enhance the guest experience?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah I think one thing we've also done is anything that we're going to do in our welcome station, for example, is going to be locally sourced. We are supporting local businesses through, whether it be coffee or whatever we're doing, we're sourcing that locally. We're also involving the for profit businesses by going to those businesses, introducing ourselves, letting them know that we're going to be supporting them and promoting them to guests. Our digital guidebook promotes all local businesses and talks about what those businesses have to offer. We have done some promotion of those businesses on social media.

I wrote a blog on women-owned businesses in Telluride and then we promoted all of them on Instagram and Facebook. So it extends beyond, just in people's pockets, but really trying to get the sense that we're community-based. We're local. We care. These are the, businesses we'd love you to support.

Here's our favorite restaurants, just trying to really get personal with people so that the guest experience is more than just a stay, but that they understand it's an authentic experience.

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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.

So I'm so happy to talk to Dennis Klett from Lodgify once again. And in this section, we're going to be talking about Lodgify's website builder. Dennis, how does it compare to those of its competitors in terms of ease of use and its customization options?

Dennis Klett:

Yes, our website builder is made for both single and multiple property management businesses.

If you have just one property, we optimize the website just for one property. If you have many properties, we give you like a full fledged, almost like a booking platform type of website. Super easy to get started takes you 10 minutes to create the site. You can customize it without needing any technical skills.

You can change the design, choose layout options, add your logo, change colors, change fonts, add photos. We create pages for you based on the property data that you add into the listing. But if you want to create custom pages, you can create as many as you want. Everything is translated into up to 32 languages.

It's seamlessly integrated with Google Vacation Rentals, which is a great way to generate bookings. We offer search engine optimization tools where you can boost your visibility by adjusting your title, meta description, or your URL. A domain name is included free of charge. I think we're the only ones who are offering that.

You can create coupon codes or promotional codes for website bookings. We're payment gateway agnostic. So no matter whether you go with Stripe, PayPal, Braintree and Authorize.net, we're working with all these payment gateways. There's a review system where you can collect reviews from your guests directly on your website.

So that's all without needing any technical skills, if you want to go super advanced, we do offer that you can customize your CSS. Even if you end up wanting to use a WordPress website, you can use our booking widget by copy/pasting it into your WordPress website. And we actually help you also setting it up if desired.

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Heather Bayer:

That's all great. I know so many operators are looking to create their own websites for direct booking and this sounds like a great option.

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Heather Bayer:

In these five months since you've been going, have you been able to, create an impact that you can see within the community?

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Kirsten King:

I think we are really new. I'm going to be honest about that. And we're just getting ready to make these first donations. I think that, we've got a good start and I'm, really thrilled with our progress so far, but we've also just had Simply the challenge of getting a business up and going from ground zero.

We made the decision to bootstrap this versus taking investment capital that was offered. And Kevin and I have done this 100 percent on our own. And so you've got the whole situation with getting PMS systems in place, getting technology in place, operational systems. All kinds of things really the things I've touched on to date are the things that we've done.

We've certainly had conversations with those organizations and they're very appreciative and we're looking forward to really deepening this in the community. I also want to be careful not to spread ourselves too thin. I went over a lot of different things that we've started and now it's time to dig in and put some meat behind all of that versus just talking about it.

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Heather Bayer:

So you're working remotely at the moment. How does that work out? Because it's, you this is the end of your winter season. Have you been away for the entire winter?

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Kirsten King:

I have. I've been on a visit to Telluride and I'm going again soon. But overall, I have been working remotely and it's great because Kevin's on the ground in Telluride. I'm here and I'm able to build a lot of the systems, do a lot of the work that needs to happen. There's plenty of that for anyone who works remote. You know that. Talking to homeowners, building those relationships. I'm just in the process of all of the spring project communication and, deep cleans and all the things that have to happen to make those properties amazing for a guest or an owner when they show up. So a lot of what I do behind the scenes is communication related, writing blogs, doing social media, talking with owners, organizing systems for the company.

Heather Bayer:  

Well it certainly goes to show that you can do this, providing you've got the boots on the ground that the boots of the ground that is not just a cleaning team, but is somebody that's driving the business forward on the ground. And it does make working remotely a lot more comfortable for sure.

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Kirsten King:

I would never, though, try. I know from Big Sky as well. I was so involved there and so much in the field, even, helping teams flip laundry on busy Saturdays and doing all the things that just have to take place and have to happen. And I do really think that it's important to be there locally. And I wish I could be there more and I hopefully in the future, I will be able to be in Telluride more than I am right now. But our team will all be locally based and everyone will be actually in the community because of the involvement that we talked about and the importance of that. Companies try to build these really, it looks glitzy from the outside and the marketing's all fancy and everything looks polished, but the reality is they have no

And I, I personally do not think that can succeed, or at least not succeed very well.

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Heather Bayer:

Let's move on to the team, because they are really important to you. With a number of companies in the area, plus the difficulty, and I know this, of accommodating people who are team workers in the local area. How many people have you got on your team?

How have you found them? And how have you organized, what they do?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah right now we have really just been working. We don't have any full-time employees yet. We've been contracting part-time with people, looking for kind of our key players. I'll be honest, we're going to be really selective and really careful about that, because we have the luxury of keeping it small.

We're not trying to be 150-200 properties, and I both experienced that managing 30, 40, 50 employees. And we manage our, we do have in house cleaning So that team is managed and, local to Telluride, so there is that piece of it. In terms of the Curate Telluride team, we're really looking for individuals, as I mentioned, that are involved locally in all those different aspects of being part of the community.

We're looking for people who. aren't the kind of people who say, Oh, that isn't in my job description. We've all had that. There's just times in hospitality where you need to make something happen and it isn't really part of somebody's job description, but it's what you do to make that experience exceptional. I'm sure a lot of people on the podcast have read the book Unreasonable Hospitality, and know about things like the hot dog moment. And, we give people a budget to be able to make those moments happen, no questions asked. You can spend some money at the local bakery or go pick up something that would make the experience special.

So we're really trying to get attuned to listening to what guests say during the booking process. And are they celebrating something special? Are they there for a particular reason? What can we do during their stay to make that stand out and let them know that we heard something small that makes a difference to them? And so moving forward, we'll really be working on that with team and making sure that becomes part of our team meetings, a discussion around, Hey, what were you able to do sprinkling fairy dust.

And I had somebody on our team at Big Sky Vacation Rentals that was just amazing at that. She was the most amazing guest experience team member that I've ever met and she could take any situation and turn it around, those are the kind of people we're looking for, and that takes time. We've been talking to some people and have some people in mind, but as you can imagine too, you start a company and you might maybe have a few properties and then it turns into five and then it's eight. So we really have just been in that growth process of getting to a place where it makes sense to add different team members.

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah, exactly. I was talking to Steve Trover over the past couple of days in Banff and we had a lot of conversations on finding the right people for the right seats. Because I know, I think we all know from experience that when you don't do that right, when you don't get the right person in the right seat, it can have a real compound effect on how the business feels, how it operates, but also how it feels. So you say you're, what are you going to use to ensure that you get those right people in the right seats?

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Kirsten King:

In my previous organization, we did use Predictive Index, and I found tools like that really to be valuable. I wish I had started doing things like that earlier. We implemented EOS and Predictive Index way too late. And honestly those were things that would have made such a difference culturally had they been implemented in the beginning, because we had that 'small team' feel in the early years where we all knew each other.

We all interacted in one little office. Everyone was like family. And as you grow an organization, it really, I think honestly I wasn't probably a strong enough leader to know how to go from five or six team members to a team of, at one time, I think we had, because we did bring cleaning in house, we had almost 50 employees and that got to just be a lot. It was it the balance of how to make that a great environment for the employees in addition to all the other things that you're doing, I lost my focus a little bit on that. So moving forward part of that idea of keeping it small, we really want this to be an environment that somebody can grow and stay.

We want to be able to pay people well enough that they can stay for the long haul, and that typical churn that you see in resort communities, we just don't have that because it's such a great working environment. And that takes some time to put all those pieces and structure in place.

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Heather Bayer:

I'm glad you mentioned EOS, because we never came across it at all in our 20 years. I spent three hours on the way back from Banff the other day reading Traction and sitting next to my business partner, who's also my son, and going through a lot of the templates and forms and filling them in and thinking, Wow, I wish we'd had this so many years ago.

It would have been so helpful, certainly for a start to get the right people in the right seats. But secondly, to set goals and to know what we were doing and not flail about going from one month to the next, not really being conscious of what we were trying to achieve.

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Kirsten King:

And, you absolutely have to know what each individual team member is responsible for to even know what you need to bring in. One of the things I've been just working on in my spare time is things like the accountability chart from EOS to really say, Okay, what am I doing in the organization? What is my partner doing? Where are our needs? Because we need to be hiring for the pieces that somebody needs to be accountable for versus what we typically do is, we hire somebody like us that we really like from a personality standpoint, but they might not have the right skill set or be, passionate about the things that the organization needs.

And so all of these things are being considered. And as we work with individuals that are locally based, but they're not our employees, we're really right now, just contracting with them, looking at when we're having those interactions, what works well, what are they, lacking that we would like to see in a team member? And it's really helping us hone our focus on the people that we'll bring in full time.

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Heather Bayer:

So looking forward, as we say, you're just five months in now. What are your goals for the next five months? In terms of enhancing your community involvement for a start, but anything else that you might have in your goal list?

Kirsten King:

I am hoping to work on, from an organizational standpoint over the next few months is just really getting our process in place and really developing out SOPs for how we do each thing in our organization. You realize it's interesting because when I started Big Sky Vacation Rentals, it was honestly just an accident, and I think a lot of us ended up in our companies because something was just working and it became word of mouth and organic growth. And over time, all of a sudden we found ourselves owning these amazing organizations.

I'm really trying to be more intentional about that so that we can help others, because Curate Telluride, for us is really something that was.... we started in our home communities as a test to see, could we do something that could be replicated in other communities by others? And so we would love eventually to find partners, who are really well connected in a community and maybe have a handful of properties, but have no idea how to scale or how to grow their organization into a vacation rental company, that can be having a positive impact in their community. And so my goal over the next several months is to start to create those processes and SOPs so that we can assist if we find the right partner in a different place, they want to come on board and work with us, that we have all of that in place so that we're able to help them start inroads in their own communities and create those partnerships.

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Heather Bayer:

That sounds like a great project. Just tell me, Kirsten, I alluded at the beginning that I thought you were crazy to go back into this.

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Kirsten King:

A lot of people have told me that. You're not the first.

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Heather Bayer:

I had 20 years in the business and still two years on, people are saying, would you go back into it? No, not, never.

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Kirsten King:

My friend Sarah has said that too. She's wow. I just, but it's interesting to having a perspective of I am choosing to do this. I got to do this. I'm blessed to be able to go back to an industry that I really did love. And I lost, honestly, I lost my focus on what I really liked because I got so focused on all the things that were hard. It was COVID and a lot of things happened that really, I had a perfect storm of pile up emotionally, of staffing challenges and the whole situation with COVID. And I literally personally called 300 and some reservations because I felt so badly. And we refunded every single one of those reservations during COVID, our resort shut down during the busiest week of spring break. And that compiled with a lawsuit and a bunch of other things that happened that were just very stressful and frankly, just burned me out. And so it's interesting now having a super supportive partner who's so talented, and has so much to offer, and being able to collaborate and say, Hey, we're making a choice to do this.

I can't really get crabby about that. I don't get to, I have to look at the positive things. So I think it's just a chance to do it in a different way more intimately than we did in the past more with a focus. And that's exciting to me.

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Heather Bayer:

So for other vacation rental managers who might be listening, what advice can you give them on integrating these community-centric practices into their business models?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah. I think one of the first things is just identifying the needs in the community and a lot of that comes through involvement. So being involved at the school, attending the chamber of commerce meetings. Going to local hearings on things that are happening in the community and really we've been fortunate to both be in very small communities.

Big Sky is a community of about 3000 full-time residents. Telluride's pretty similar, and so it's a lot easier to see what's going on, and a lot of ski towns have similar issues with affordable housing, with transient workforce, with affordable food, all these issues. And so it's not so difficult in littler towns to figure out where these issues lie.

I think if I was in a bigger market, it is talking to real estate agents, talking to business owners, and just really figuring out where the pain points and what is your passion, what do you want to focus on in that community? Because I think we can get ourselves too spread out and too thin, and then it's hard to have an impact. But I think joining your local chamber of commerce, and in just getting your name out there would be a starting point.

I think also looking at what are the obvious solutions that your company can provide. It was pretty clear to me in Big Sky, where my previous company was located, that the workforce had a difficult time affording groceries. We were 45 minutes from a town that had a larger market and the grocery stores that were in Big Sky still are very expensive. A food bank started and it was very clear that there was a need there and that the seasonal workforce was very dependent on the food bank. This was very much towards the end of my tenure at Big Sky Vacation Rentals, but I could see that need and I so wanted to take what we were doing, every turnover I could see the abundance of food that was being left in our vacation rentals. Frankly, while the cleaners could have some of it, there was way more than any one needed. And we did start to try to collect all of that and everything from creating a food shelf in the back of our office for employees, but also giving to the food bank.

But I never got that effort organized in a way that I think it could have been across the whole STR community. I think we could have done some things to solve for that and bring all of those non perishables into our local food bank. So what is it in your community? What is it that your company could get involved in and start to have some impact and, what is your personal passion? What are the needs there? I think that's where I would start, if I was just, starting with this idea.

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Heather Bayer:

I think the advice to join the chamber of commerce is stellar. Tyann Marcink talked about this years ago when I interviewed her, probably about six or seven years ago, and she was starting up in Branson, Missouri. And she said the first thing, join the Chamber of Commerce and get known.

And it worked very well for her, just from being there and knowing the people in the tourist office. So when somebody walked into the tourist office to get some information and then they asked about accommodation. Branson Family Retreats was the company that they were recommending because they knew Tyann. They knew what she was doing in that area. So it's very fulfilling personally, fulfilling for the company, but also giving back to the community as well. So I love that.

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Kirsten King:

Yeah. I think joining boards as well. I was on a board for Visit Big Sky, which was our, the destination piece of the chamber of commerce and I think just hearing what all the statistics and information that was brought into that, all the data along with just people talking about, challenges . We didn't touch on this, but I think a lot of resort communities, in some ways, there's a segment of the population that wants to limit tourism because it's impacting the local community. And, this is something you'll see on Curate site on the homepage, just the do's and don'ts. It's tongue in cheek a little bit, but really it's the start of something we didn't talk about, which is how do we help a guest understand how to be a great visitor in the community? And not disruptive to the community, whether it be through picking, honestly, picking up your dog poop, picking up your trash, all these basics. But recycling, sustainability efforts that are happening, what are those in your community? And how can you as a vacation rental company tie into the sustainability efforts that are already going on?

There's just so many things. And that was one way over the years between 2008 when I moved into Big Sky and now I've sat on many boards, teams, been involved in the school and all of those things that you do help you get connected to the issues.

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Heather Bayer:

Yes. Don't operate in a vacuum. I'll be putting a link to CurateTelluride.com onto the Show Notes. Please go take a look and don't just look at the homepage, go right the way through. I love the page that you have called What We Do, and because you have your 'good partner's commitment' on there, and the three things that I saw that, everybody should be doing this, What is your purpose? What is your mission? What is your goal? So could you just tell us what each of those are, within your website and your company?

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Kirsten King:

Yeah, our goal is to lead with relentless generosity and I've touched on so many of the things that we're doing. We've tried to weave our purpose and our goals through everything on the site, from the home page to the partner page. When we have homeowner conversations through our literature that we send out to homeowners, This idea of connecting with community and giving back. Our tagline is, giving back one stay at a time. Or, all of that to us is really important that be carried across all that we do. Hopefully, if you do take a look, you'll see that those things are woven across everything.

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah. The website looks like it's intentional. Every page is intentional. It goes way beyond templated websites and goes into something that's really meaningful. Yeah, go take a look at that.

Kirsten, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. Almost, not quite, almost, in fact, very nearly not quite, you're inspiring me to explore whether I should go back into this in a few years time, but no.

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Kirsten King:

No, I know, but you have a passion of podcasts and you get to meet so many interesting people in the industry, so it's great.

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Heather Bayer:

Yes, absolutely. There's an expression for it, and I can't think of it at the moment, but every person that comes on, I take from everybody and it just makes me feel so much better about this business and this industry. And you hear a lot in the press about where it's going, but I get that I get the pleasure of speaking with somebody every week that brings me back to the just thorough enjoyment of this business that I know that you have as well.

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Kirsten King:

Yes. I love the people. So many great people.

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Heather Bayer:

I hope we get the opportunity to to get together at some point in the future, maybe sometime this year. But for now, thank you so much. And, we wish you every good fortune as you go forward with Curate Telluride, and I look forward to coming back to it maybe in about in a year's time or so and taking another look and see where you've come.

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Kirsten King:

Yeah. I'm so impressed with what others in this space are already doing. They're probably light years ahead of us, but we're excited about it and looking forward to it.

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Heather Bayer:

Thank you.

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Kirsten King:

Yeah. Thanks Heather.

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Heather Bayer:

Thank you so much, Kirsten, for joining me and for sharing all that goodness. And, I call it goodness. Curate Telluride is all about curating good. And as I said, in that episode, I really encourage you to go and take a look at the curatetelluride.com website. A great model of how to create something that is beautiful, a little bit out of the ordinary. Not what you'd normally expect to see on a website. There's so many of them, isn't there? So many websites, and they all look very much the same. To actually go through the homepage of Curate Telluride, you'll see that, The, the featured properties come down below the fold.

It's a real showcase of what they do and it showcases a passion for the community. You could go to a lot of websites and go through them and not even know where they are and what sort of connection they have with that community.

But this is very different. So encourage you to go take a look at that. So that's it for another week. of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. I'm really looking forward to coming back next week with yet another great interview. We're focusing on our core principles of trust, hospitality, and responsibility in all the upcoming podcast episodes.

So if anybody has a recommendation for somebody I should interview that maybe has a small-ish property management company. I say small-ish, up to 150-200 properties or so. And you feel that they have a really good story to tell about anything to do with trust, to do with responsibility. to do with exceptional hospitality, please let me know. We're always on the lookout for really good stories to tell. And we'd love the opportunity for those who are out there really working in it, just like Kirsten and Kevin are. We want to give them the opportunity to tell their stories.

So let me know, you can email me at heather@vacationrentalformula.com and I will get back to you and have a discussion about it.

So I hope you enjoyed that. I hope that's given you some inspiration and if it has and you enjoyed it, please let me know. You can always leave me a review on whichever platform you enjoy listening to your podcasts on. But I'd love to hear, I'd love to get emails, and let me know. And also let me know if there's something you think I could do better. After 10 years, there's always things that we can do better. Thank you for listening. I will be with you again next week.

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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.

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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