Heather Bayer
Today, we are diving into a crucial topic for anyone in the short-term rental business, and that's company culture and creating a company personality. We're thrilled to have Rachel Alday, the co-founder of Abode Luxury Vacation Rentals with us to share her insights on building a world-class team that truly embodies the values of their company.

Heather Bayer
This is the 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 truly delighted to be back with you once again.

Heather Bayer
Today, We're going to be talking about company culture. What is that? Well, basically, it's the vibe of a workplace, including how everyone works together, what they believe in, and how they get things done. And I'm sure we all have plenty of experiences of good company cultures and poor company cultures if we look back over our time in the workplace.

Heather Bayer
But to understand why company culture is so important, let's look at a well-known example of what happens when it goes wrong. So I want to talk about Uber. Uber grew really rapidly after its founding in 2009; however, this growth came with what has been called toxic workplace culture. In 2017, there was a former Uber engineer, her name's Susan Fowler. She published a blog post detailing her experiences with sexual harassment and discrimination at the company. That was the start of an upending of Uber as it was at that time, because Fowler's complaints were pretty much ignored, which It created in itself a hostile environment where employees felt unsafe and they felt unsupported.

Heather Bayer
Uber's culture at that time was marked by intense internal competition and a lack of accountability. Susan writes about this in her book, which is called Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber. The company's CEO at the time, his name was Travis Kalanick, resigned amongst all these things that were going on. And then Uber had to overhaul its leadership and policies to begin repairing what was then a very damaged reputation. So I'm just using this as an example that shows how a toxic culture can lead to severe consequences. And in Uber's case, that was legal issues, financial losses, and a lot of damage to their reputation.

Heather Bayer
But it just underscores the importance of fostering a positive supportive workplace culture, especially in our industry, where guest experience is paramount, and a cohesive team, and a good feeling at work makes such a difference. So let's turn our focus to Abode Luxury Vacation Rentals, which was founded over 10 years ago by Rachel Alday and her husband, Rob. Abode has grown into a really highly respected company by staying true to their small family business values. Rachel actually likes the expression Mom and Pop Shop to describe her type of business. And they've maintained over the years, rigorous attention to detail and a deep love for creating amazing vacations for their guests. And this dedication has helped them build a team that's not only skilled, but is deeply committed to the company's mission.

Heather Bayer
So creating a strong company culture means hiring people who share your values and providing ongoing training to ensure everyone in the team is aligned. At Abode, this means selecting team members who love luxury and great service and who are dedicated to making each guest feel at home. Creating a strong company culture and building a team that feels like family can lead to employees staying with the company longer and providing better service. And as Rachel is going to share with us, many of Abode's employees have been with the company for years. Which is a real testament to the strong and supportive culture that they built. This longevity not only benefits the company, but it also enriches the guest experience like a knock-on effect as seasoned employees bring a wealth of knowledge and a personal touch to their interactions. In short, for short-term rental businesses, having a strong company culture is a powerful tool. It helps create a consistent and high-quality guest experience, keeps employees happy and loyal, and sets the stage for ongoing success. As I talk to Rachel, you'll learn how Abode Luxury Vacation Rentals has built a great team that truly represents their core values and delivers outstanding results.

Heather Bayer
So without further ado, let's get started and hear from Rachel about building a thriving company culture in our industry. Super happy to have with me today, Rachel Alday from Abode Luxury Vacation Rentals. Welcome, Rachel. Thank you so much for joining me.

Rachel Alday
Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad to be here.

Heather Bayer
It was great to meet you face-to-face in Boise. That was such fun. That was a really good conference, I thought. What about you?

Rachel Alday
Yeah, I totally agree. I didn't really know what to expect because I hadn't gone to that before, but I loved it. And now I'm so excited that they're becoming VR Nation and that we'll all be going to more conferences like that.

Heather Bayer
I know. More and more conferences. You've just come back from a conference. Tell us about that.

Rachel Alday
Yeah, I did. I went to Women Leading Travel and Hospitality, and it was their second annual. This year was in Charlotte. I think last year was Nashville. Like I said, I didn't go last year, but this was my first year. I did not know what to expect because it was like C-suite people from Hertz, Expedia, Marriott, Hilton, all that stuff, which is not really our usual VR vacation rental group. But it was cool, actually. It was really inspiring. I met some really interesting people. I liked it. I think I would go again.

Heather Bayer
Were there any other vacation rental folks there?

Rachel Alday
One, Julie Byrd from Cabo Villas, and they actually just got bought by Nocturne. That was really interesting because it was really cool to see what Nocturne is doing. Then to get to know Julie better, I've talked to her, but I'd never met her in person. She does vacation rentals, the same caliber of vacation rentals that we do, more high-end stuff, but in Cabo. And so, yeah, it was great to get to hang out with her, too.

Heather Bayer
Oh, yeah. I keep thinking it would be nice to go to a conference that is not 100% vacation rentals and just get a vision of life on the outside.

Rachel Alday
Yeah. I mean, honestly, it made me really grateful for the industry that we're in. I've been talking to Meaghan Moylan about this a ton, but I don't know, you probably agree, but I feel like we have all these really cool people in our industry, because it's such a mom and pop shop origin story for most of the companies that have been around since before COVID. And so that creates this really cool groups of people that are, I don't know, a lot more down to earth and authentic than most conferences. Before we started this business, my husband and I, I did work in marketing with Coca-Cola, McDonald's. So I know that whole corporate world, and that's why I love the vacation rental industry so much, because it's not that. I love our industry and I love our conferences, because everyone is so down to earth and so real. This conference was cool and it was inspirational and interesting, but it honestly made me all the more grateful for the industry that I'm in, because our conferences are so much more meaty and so much more... We really talk about tactics and real business things and not just the inspirational part, which is also helpful, but our industry is so interesting and so different.

Rachel Alday
Sometimes I think... Maybe I think our industry is different and special because it's my industry. Maybe I'm just thinking that because I'm idealizing what I do. But then I go to this conference, and it was a great conference, and the people were great. But I was like, I left it thinking, I am so glad I work in the industry and the business that I do. I don't want to deal with the corporate stuff that's so much more prevalent in other industries. And I love how ours is unique the way it is.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I'm really with you on that. And we're going to be heading back into conference season again. It's almost like it's not really stopped, but just a couple of months and we'll be back into it again.

Heather Bayer
You mentioned origin story. So this is what I'd like to kick off with you. Is your origin story? Because you mentioned Mom and Pop, and it's interesting because that's been used almost in derogatory way....

Rachel Alday
Totally!

Heather Bayer
...And I think the majority of businesses, I do this with every podcast, every interview - How did you start? And then 80% of people started in exactly the same way, which is that mom and pop - I had my own property. It grew or my parents had a property, and it grew from that. So, yeah, I love these stories. What's yours?

Rachel Alday
Yeah. I mean, I think these stories are the secret sauce for our industry, honestly. But yeah, same as these. So my husband and I, we weren't even married at the time. We were dating, about to be married. And my husband had this condo that was a mountainside condo in Park City at Deer Valley [Utah]. And he was in real estate, and that was when everything was tanking, because we've been in business for about 15 years. He was looking for what he was going to do next.

Rachel Alday
At the time, I was working for Coca-Cola, and I was working in a marketing role. He was looking at what he was going to do next, because the real estate stuff wasn't so hot. He had said, Well, I think what I want to do is do property management. A couple of his clients from real estate had asked if he could... Because he lived in Park City, they had asked if he could take care of the house and maybe do a few rentals. Because as we know at that time, there were rentals, but it wasn't that hot. It was like, Can you put my house on Vrbo and can you take care of it?

Rachel Alday
He was like, I think what I'm going to do is just manage a couple. It was three properties. I think it was one homeowner that had two and then another homeowner that had one. It was three properties that he was going to take care of and then do the rentals for a percentage. He was like, That's what I want to do. I honestly thought it was a terrible idea because, well, it sounds like a ton of dirty work for pennies. I wanted him, and this is funny now, especially with all these movies coming out about this topic, but I wanted him to be a pharmaceutical salesperson, because people that were doing pharmaceutical sales, they were making so much money. The pharmaceutical sales people were always these attractive young people that they were hiring. My husband is highly attractive, in my opinion, but I think in general. I was trying to push him to go interview for a job in pharmaceutical sales, and he was having none of it. He was like, No, I want to do vacation rental stuff. I was like, Okay, fine. You know what? I had this really great job with Coca-Cola, and I had really good benefits and a good salary. I was like, It's fine. You can try it out. If it works, cool. If it doesn't, we have a way to sustain ourselves. Anyway, as is usually the case with my husband and I, I was wrong, he was right. And here we are.

Heather Bayer
I'm so sorry you just said that because....

Rachel Alday
Well, he is right a lot of the time.....

Heather Bayer
Yeah, but my husband edits this podcast. He's going to hear this!

Rachel Alday
That's funny, I know. Well, my husband is quiet, and he's not... He's patient, and he's not a big talker. So we're obviously the yin and the yang. And so, yeah, I mean, the thing with him is he doesn't say a lot, but when he does, a lot of times he's right. Anyway, he was.

Rachel Alday
Our business started slow. I didn't quit my job with Coke right away. I just was helping and doing the marketing and stuff. He was really the person that was arranging the housekeepers and meeting all the guests and checking all the houses and all that stuff for a few years. Then once we had our first child, my job with Coca-Cola, I had to travel a ton. After I had my first kid, I knew that probably wouldn't work out. Then I didn't go back after I had my first child. That's when we both started really being in the trenches together. Now, here we are. It was totally organic. It wasn't like we sat down and had strategy meetings. We didn't have a trust fund or any investment. We just, as is a lot of the stories from our wonderful industry, we just bootstrapped it, and we never even thought about hiring any employees ever.

Rachel Alday
I remember when we hired our first employee, I was freaking out. I think the first person was $10 an hour. I remember like, We cannot do this. We can't afford it. We cannot hire this part-time $10 an hour person. But anyway, here we are now. We have closer to 60 employees, and we manage over 200 properties across three markets. It all just happened slowly and organically, and I love it. I love that that's how it happened, and I'm so proud of it. I really do feel such a connection to a lot of people in our industry. There are a lot of newer people, too, that are doing really cool stuff because of all the great technology we have now. But I love both sides of it. I love the long gamers, like the OG [Old Guard] crowd who, you know, we did all this when we barely had any software, and we were all operating in complete vacuums, barely even knowing that each other existed. And then now today, where we have conferences and software. And it's so cool to see where it came from and where it's going to.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, absolutely. So when you started, did you start with a set of values? Did you start by thinking, okay, we're going to have this culture. When we get this first employee, we're going to explain it to this person, and they're going to embrace everything. How did you go about growing to where you are now and keeping your foundational values in place?

Rachel Alday
Mostly by accident, to be real. So we did not, right off the bat, have an inkling about company culture, and that's just the honest truth. I know that what we believed from the very beginning is that we wanted to only manage higher-end properties, and we wanted to maintain a smaller portfolio with just higher-end properties, so that we could deliver more of a luxury service. We knew that from the beginning. We felt like that was the missing.... that was the thing that was missing, that there were some really good companies in Park City where we started, Park City, Utah. But no one was offering... They were talking about luxury, but no one was offering luxury the way that we thought it should be offered, which is more along the lines of a luxury four/five-star hotel. That's what we saw as the area that wasn't being fulfilled. We knew we wanted to do that. But to be honest, we did not... I don't think we really got the company culture piece right off the bat. Like I said, we didn't think about that, probably because we didn't even think about employees. It was really just us in our relationship and whatever.

Rachel Alday
Then it was more, I think it's five years into it, maybe a little less than that, but at least three or four years into it when we started to think about company culture, because we had a couple of employees at that point, and we were wanting to impart not only the concept of urgency, because a lot of our guests are from urban markets, but they're coming out into these mountain towns. They're expecting the sense of urgency that they're used to from an urban place, but they're not finding it.

Rachel Alday
I'm from Chicago originally. We were trying to instill in our staff the concept of urgency and what our guests sense as urgency and how we can respond to that appropriately, and also about luxury, and trying to impart to our staff what luxury means, how can they provide a luxury experience for guests, and the different ways that luxury can be perceived and experienced and all of that. But it wasn't until a few years into it that we had a few more employees. Then we read this book called Delivering Happiness, and it's by Tony Hsieh. Tony Hsieh is the guy that started Zappos. Then Zappos had this amazing company culture where they really put the customer first, and they were really obsessed with going above and beyond.

Rachel Alday
It's so much along the lines of Unreasonable Hospitality and what he talks about in that book, Will Guidara's book, where he talks about that wow factor and being able to perceive what people are dreaming about or wishing for and then making it happen. In Zappos, it's slightly different because Unreasonable Hospitality is more of a restaurant approach, and then Zappos was more of this really big online company that ended up being a shoe company, and then even more than that, and then got bought by Amazon. So we kind of stole the company culture statement. And when I say kind of, I mean, we actually did, from Delivering Happiness. At one point, we wanted to have a company culture statement in our little employee handbook that was three pages or something. We copy-pasted from Delivering Happiness. Then it's super crazy because over the years, then company culture definitely became more important for us. About five years into it... We've been in Park City. We started our business 15 years ago. Let's say it's four or five years into it that we start looking at company culture. We read the book and we're really impressed by that book. It became our little Bible or whatever.

Rachel Alday
Then I would say, let's see, right before COVID is when we had about, I think it was 32 employees, 34, something like that, right before COVID. We suddenly realized we have an amazing team. Here we are. We're operating... At this point, right before COVID, we were operating in Jackson Hole as well as Park City. We expanded to Jackson Hole about 10 years ago. We had our two markets We have 32 people in Park City, and we had three people in Jackson Hole. They were all just really good people. We've been keeping our team. Our team members have stayed with us, a lot of them, they've been with us for five years, eight years, ten years. It's amazing. We just had no idea how that happened. We looked around and we were like, We have an amazing team, and we have no idea how we got here. I had read this other book. Actually, in the Tony Hsieh book, Delivering Happiness, he talks about how he built this library for his team, and he had these, I think it was 10 books, but I could be wrong on that number exactly. He had these books that he really wanted everyone on his team to read.

Rachel Alday
If people on the team read one of the books, he would have them do this little report, and then he would pay them for it. Then he lists out the books in the company library. I remember the first one I read. Now, I can't remember if it's the first one on the book on the list or if I just decided to read this book first, but it was called Tribal Leadership, which is another book. I'm a book obsessed.

Heather Bayer
Yes. I think in Boise, you mentioned Tribal Leadership, and I immediately downloaded that.

Rachel Alday
Yes. I love it. It's so good. I read Tribal Leadership, and it really struck a chord. It talks about people have different stages in their life, especially in their life as a leader or within your job. Anyways, it does talk about there's just one stage where you're really concerned with your competitors and negative towards them. I won't get into it too much more, but I felt, Oh, whoa, that's me. I'm doing that. It really helped me change and not be so focused on my competitors, but more finding ways to speak positively about my competitors and just differentiate on my own and not try to... You don't need to put anyone else down in order to succeed. It sounds so simple, but anyway, it was a big  thing for me. I got the recommendation of that book from Tony Hsieh's book. I read it, and that was around the same time that we were realizing that we had this great team, but we had no idea how we got them because interviewing..., when I interview people, I literally just yammer on like I am right now. Then ask them a few questions. I basically just have a conversation, and I decide if in my gut it feels like a good match or not, and then we do it or not.

Rachel Alday
So just talking at people, how did we end up with such a good team? Anyway, read the Tribal Leadership Book, loved it. I got so obsessed that I reached out to the author. I went on LinkedIn and I did all this research and I found the author, and I reached out and sent an email and I was like, I love your book, and I wanted to know if he would consider consulting. Who do I think I am at this point? I'm going to reach out to this somewhat significant author and get him to talk to my team. I don't know, but I'm just like that. I think I just I get an idea and I just go for it regardless. Anyway, his name is Dave Logan. There was a couple of authors on that book, but he was the main author. I got a hold of his team and he reached back out, and they had a consulting arm of their business. His wife, Harte Logan, along with this other woman, Linny Kresch Jones. These two women I met through reading Tribal Leadership and then reaching out. Anyways, they have become our consultants. At the time, we're working with the consultant company that was created from Tribal Leadership, but they now have their own separate company.

Rachel Alday
Anyway, they came on right before COVID as a consultant to my husband and I. And originally, it was more like coaching for us, just for us to figure out how do we get this amazing group of people together and how do we keep them now and how do we keep hiring awesome people. But then COVID happened. It got a little crazy. And during COVID, I feel like this is so my life, just these weird happenstance things that just circles of life that intersect and stuff. But during COVID, Tony Hsieh, who has since passed away, unfortunately, but he had come out to Park City right before COVID for Sundance, and then he had stayed, and then COVID happened, and so he was stuck here. He ended up buying, I think, 13 properties in Park City, which is a lot. Really nice properties.

Rachel Alday
We ended up getting in touch with him because of those properties and some other stuff that he was doing, and also because we own this laundromat, the only laundromat in Park City, because we bought it to do our linens. We do our own linen processing at this laundromat overnight. Anyway, he had bought houses, and his team was having my laundromat team do the linens.

Rachel Alday
Somehow I realized, Tony Hsieh is here in Park City. He owns some houses, and he's a client of the laundromat. Anyways, he ended up becoming a client of ours, and we ended up taking on management for all these properties and working with his team. My husband and I actually got to meet with him and have meetings with him a couple of times and go out to dinner and have lunch. It was the coolest thing ever because he was such an inspiration to us way before that. He was like, the real origin story of our company culture idea came from him. Anyway, he ended up.... He wasn't in the best place of his life when he came out to Park City, and he ended up passing away really sadly. We still currently manage all those properties for his estate. It's one of the coolest things about my history and my husband and I owning this business is how that all happened. It's really sad what happened to him, but it's really crazy that there was that connection there.

Heather Bayer
It sounds like serendipity and coincidence and manifestation all rolled up. I love it.

Rachel Alday
It's so crazy, right? I really do believe... I totally believe in manifestation. It's not the manifestation where you can force it, but just the manifestation where when you're staying positive and you're trying to do the best you can, none of us are perfect. But when we're trying to do the best that we can, we're trying to put good out into the world, and we have good ideas that are helpful, not just for us, not just to make money, but for everyone that we touch, the good things happen. It's completely real, and it's crazy. I want to study more about that, too, when I have a moment, which I don't know when that will be.

Heather Bayer
I love it. I think about this a lot. I've manifested things over my lifetime, like moving to Canada, starting businesses, and looking back and thinking, I wrote this down. I wrote this down in a five-year plan. I wrote this down, and here I am, and it's all manifested. So you and I are on this, definitely on the same page. We should have this discussion. Perhaps sit down with Val. I was going to say sit down with Valerie as well. Valerie Gangas.

Rachel Alday
Yes, Valerie. Valerie Gangas, yes. I only met her not too long ago, and I feel such a connection with her because she's on our page, too. Valerie Gangas, because she wrote In Deep Shift, which is like, I mean, I have a whole other story about meeting her. I'm working on a book now. I mean, literally, it's so crazy how things happen. But okay, I am a squirrel with my ability to stay on topic. So I'm sorry.

Heather Bayer
All right. I just want to go back. So the team, they were doing fabulously and you didn't know how they got there. So you hired consultants, and they helped you reverse engineer and go back and figure out what you did with them. How did that work?

Rachel Alday
Yes. Okay, so they came on initially and they were coaching my husband and I. And one of the first things they did was the Enneagram test with us. Do you know what the Enneagram is? I hate personality tests. A lot of times I feel like some of those tests are just self-fulfilling. It's like, I'm a maverick. It's like, Of course I am. I don't know. It feels like a little bit of an ego booster thing. They introduced us to the Enneagram, which initially I was like, Okay, whatever. But we did this Enneagram test, and it puts you into a personality type 1 through 9. It was really helpful for my husband and I working together because it showed a lot of the things that we struggle with in communication between each other, and it gave us a lot of tools that were helpful. I was bought in after all that. Then we started doing Enneagram testing with our whole team through these consultants, and that became super helpful, because it was really interesting to learn about what certain personality types struggle with and how certain number types interact with each other and how it works well or it's hard.

Rachel Alday
That was really helpful for our whole team. Then these consultants, they've just done a ton with us in terms of coaching for my husband and I, but also for our team members. One of them is a coach and one of them is a therapist. They've been immensely helpful with us, learning how to figure out where to put people on the team and how to help people have a good growth path so that they stay motivated and they stay with us for a long time, how to do a better job interviewing and making sure we're communicating really clearly about what the position is and what our company culture is and how we feel about the people we want on the team and making sure we're getting those people to join us. With our company culture, there is this really strong component about treating each other like family. I think the way we name it in our values is deep roots grow. My husband and I, obviously, we're married. We started the company together. My sister works here. She's worked here for 10 years. One of our really early employees was actually our previous nanny, and now she runs our operations, and she's amazing.

Rachel Alday
And her sister works here as well. One of our first reservation salespeople that we hired, his daughter-in-law works here, and she's really moved up through the ranks. We have a family tree in our office on the wall that shows everyone, because a lot of people on our team have brought their friends and family onto the team. So then we built this family tree that shows how everyone is related and how they all got here, and it's been really cool. But so that's where a strong part of our values that we've formed with our consultants and also through what we learned from Tony Hsieh's book. Is just a lot about deep roots grow, having each other's back, the value of time over money. Because a lot of our team, here we are, we're operating in these ski towns. We operate in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sun Valley, Idaho, and Park City, Utah. Nobody moves to these places for a job. We don't have a pool of people to pull from that came here because they like to work a lot. Everybody came here because they want to be outside. Most of our team values their time more than they even value the money that we pay them.

Rachel Alday
So then that's a really interesting concept to work with, and our consultants have helped us with that. How do we encourage, motivate, and inspire people? It's not money. It's often not through how much they're making. It's been a really interesting journey. I know that if my husband and I didn't have consultants to help us, and I don't... Of course, the consultants that we work with, I adore them, and they're amazing. But I do feel like companies in the vacation rental industry that are looking to do a better job with their company culture and figure it out, it's not always like you have to have this certain consultant, but it's having someone who's focused on that and who has a background in, say, therapy or life coaching and that stuff, it is immensely helpful because it really can help you to understand where the different people on your team are coming from, what makes them tick. And then how do you account for that, how do you care about that, and how do you get all of your values together where you have this group of people that can all have a set of values that we all agree on in the business?

Rachel Alday
Whenever the consultants first talked to me about how we needed company values, I was like, Look, I have values that I live by, but how am I going to tell other people what their values are? That just seems, I don't know, oppressive. But they took some time and explained it to us, and it started to make sense. If you get the right people on your team, then those are the people that are going to have similar values to you. You can all together collaboratively believe in the same thing for what you're doing at work. I think in the vacation rental space, it matters even more because we need people who get that dopamine hit from helping someone else. That's a huge thing. When I do a job description, like a listing online, I don't even do those anymore myself. But when I did, I would literally put, Do you get a dopamine hit from solving someone else's problem? Or whatever, because that's who I want. You want people who get off on making someone else happy even when it's not easy. That's a hard thing to harness and to understand. But I think that's the magic of the vacation rental industry.

Rachel Alday
I do think that more and more companies in our space are focusing on this and looking at it. I think that it could be one of those really defining factors on closing the gap between hotels and the special ability they have to really achieve within the concept of hospitality and vacation rental. I think that's one of the main areas that the vacation rental industry has struggled with is achieving consistency with excellent hospitality. I think part of that comes from a really good company culture.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. You said it more recently that you're seeing these companies that are focusing so much more on hospitality. And I mean, you were at the executive summit. You were there with Robin Cragan, who exemplifies this whole ethos of delivering hospitality first. I look back 10 or 12 years ago or when I was in the first six or seven years of my business I guess that there were a lot of companies out there doing good stuff, but nobody was really standing out saying, the guest really, really does come first.

Rachel Alday
Yeah, I agree. I had this thought recently. I've been pondering this. So back story on this is there's the whole concept of, We had this great team, we did not know how we built it, we wanted to keep them, we didn't know how. So we hired a consultant, we dove into it, we figured that out, right? I mean, not perfectly because whatever, but we did a pretty good job. We're figuring out how that all worked and how we can keep it going. That feels like I checked that box, I guess. It's a box. It's something that we're always going to have to continue working on. But it was a project we worked on for years and we got there. Now my project is... Okay, so I love Robin Cragan. When I heard Robin Cragan on a podcast a couple of years ago, again, I had a total epiphany moment, like, Oh, my gosh, he's doing what we do. Here's this man, and he is talking about stuff the way we talk about it in our company. It was, We all feel like we're operating in a vacuum, especially before there were a lot of conferences.

Rachel Alday
You hear someone like Sarah and T, or for me, when I heard Robin Cragan, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is our soulmate. He's out there. I, of course, reached out to him, and I was like, I have to meet you. We have to hang out. My husband and I got to know him really well. At executive conference, we had dinner with him four nights in a row or something. I feel such a connection with him and his wife and what they're doing. Anyway, I've been thinking about all of that. Now my next project after figuring out our company culture is hospitality. We're doing a good job. There's a bunch of us out here. We're doing a good job. But what are we doing exactly? How are we doing it? I could say company culture, but there's more meat to it, and I don't understand it yet fully. That's our next project we've been working on with our consultants is, let's explain to ourselves and teach ourselves what is the meaning of hospitality? What is the meaning of hospitality in vacation rentals? How are we doing it? Why do we get such good reviews?

Rachel Alday
Okay, there's the tactics, but what's the secret sauce behind it? We have been working on that. One of the things that I've started to think about within the past couple of weeks is like... Actually, it started with being at Executive Summit, because the hotel was the Boca Raton Hotel. It was so great, and the hospitality was amazing. I started to think to myself, if you look at the history of hotels. Hotels started as they were more mass available to people. It was a very high-end thing. A hotel was a very fancy place in a bigger city, and there was those big brands first. Then as the hotels became more and more mass market and proliferated, it went from the top down. And now there's Hampton Inns, and Holland Inns, and there's tons of that. And they're modeled after that higher-end concept, but bringing it down in whatever way possible into this more affordable, mass-marketed thing. I think what's interesting is, vacation rentals are the opposite. Vacation rentals started with places where you have to bring your own sheets, and there was no marketing, and it was just Find them in the newspaper or on this mailer or something.

Rachel Alday
It started with a really basic offering, and now it's proliferated up. But it's like we're taking the really basic thing and we're trying to make it bigger and more widespread and more high-end, but we're building that high-end version oftentimes off of this really basic model. I think maybe that's where the break is between our ability to offer great hospitality, because we're trying to take something that's more of a service-based thing and not as much about hospitality and connection, and we're trying to paint it with hospitality. You know what I mean? I don't know. What do you think about that?

Heather Bayer
I love that idea. I was there with the..... down there at the bottom when guests had to bring their own linens and actually do their own cleaning before they left. But it's almost... I mean, to me, it almost seems like this is a bit of an hour glass thing going on. I have this... I mean, my company was not... Our properties that we marketed were not all high-end, but we liked to feel, we felt that we were delivering a luxury service. And I think this is something that needs to come out, that you don't have to have a multimillion dollar property with absolutely high-end luxury furniture and furnishings, you can still have luxury.

Rachel Alday
Yes. It's in that authenticity. It is.

Heather Bayer
And that's wherein that hospitality lies, to be able to deliver what somebody says, wow, I felt treated like a queen or a king.

Rachel Alday
Yes. And so that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately, just about the concept of service, because service is more like the tactical things that we do. And then hospitality, which I feel is the going above and beyond, the treating someone very special. And then I think maybe the piece that makes things like, say, the Boca Raton Hotel or that level is more like a two-way connection with the guest and then the host, where it's like you're really anticipating, but also asking for what people need, and then you're listening to what they say, and you're giving that to them. The guest is invested in that relationship, too. It's not just like they don't care. They are starting to care about... Being at that hotel, I was starting to be really interested in the history of that location and that place. I think that's when you have that true hospitality feeling is when there's that back and forth connection.

Rachel Alday
I don't know. I find the whole thing super interesting to think about because we've all been in the trenches and slogging it out for all these years, and you finally get to the place where you're like, Okay, we know what we're doing. Somehow we got here, we're doing the thing. But then you want to it more. You did it. I think it's like we get there, especially in this industry, because we were so fragmented. We're throwing spaghetti at the wall for years and seeing what sticks and what works. You figure it out because you made so many mistakes that now you know what not to do, and thereby somehow you figured out what you should do. But then it's a matter of sitting back and taking account of all of that.

Heather Bayer
Going back to your team and this culture, which is, it seems, to be all pervading. One of the reasons I really wanted you to come on and talk about this was I saw a post you did about your company retreat, where you took your company....

Rachel Alday
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. About what?

Heather Bayer
Your company retreat.

Rachel Alday
Yes.

Heather Bayer
Where you took your team away. And I think, did your consultants go as well?

Rachel Alday
Yes. And they plan that for us every year. Yeah. Should I tell you? Okay. I'm such a spazzy talker. I don't know. I'm only going to ever be on probably five podcasts ever in my life because it's a one and done. I do it, and then people are exhausted after they talk to me because they're like, whoa, she's all over the place. But the retreat, so that came to us as an idea from our consultants. They really were pushing us to do an off-site. Of course, I'm anti-corporate everything. Initially, I was like, An off-site? That sounds so corporate and whatever. But it did resonate with me because of the concept of taking them and treating them with something nice and taking them on a little trip and getting out of the grind and figuring some things out. We found this place in Capitol Reef, which is this smaller national park, and it's a total hidden gem.

Rachel Alday
This place that we go to is called The Lodge at Red River Ranch. Again, this is a total hidden gem. If you drove by it, you might not look twice, but it is the coolest spot ever. It's like a mini hotel, and I think it has 18 rooms. They've all their own bathrooms. It's not like a hostel. It's a little hotel, but it's like a log cabin. They have bison on the property. It's red rock all around and a river. It's so gorgeous. Anyway, it's a really amazing spot that just gives you that feeling that you could manifest something there, I swear.

Rachel Alday
Every year, what we do now, I think we just did our fifth year, was this year of the retreat. We invite the whole team, and we set a theme each year. This year was professionalism. Our team was, say, early 20s to late 30s, majority of the team. There's some outliers, but that's the majority. A lot of them haven't worked in super professional jobs before. A lot of them have worked in the ski industry or guiding and doing stuff like that. We have had to work on some professionalism. While we're offering an authentic experience in the mountains, there still needs to be some professionalism. That was our theme this year. But what we do on the retreat that I think is so impactful for the whole team is we We have our sessions during the day where we talk.

Rachel Alday
We talk about the Enneagram, and we talk about how to use what we know about the Enneagram to work better together. But we also just end up spending a bunch of time hanging out in the evenings. One of our team members, who is amazing, took these great videos, just little clips, and then made a little snippet that I posted online, and she put it to music. It was so perfect because it showed our team members just really sitting back, relaxing around a campfire-type thing. All of us on our camp chairs outside by the mountains. You could just tell in the video. I mean, I can tell it every day, and I can especially tell it on our retreat. But our team is just really connected, and you could just see it once they get a chance to relax. They really are friends with each other and they care about each other so much, I could cry. I'm like, Don't do that right now.

Rachel Alday
But it's so cool because that's what makes it work at work is because our team doesn't just leave at 5:00 or whatever time and say, Peace, I'm out. If they can't get all the stuff that they were supposed to get done today, they make sure to tell the next person, Hey, these are the things I couldn't get done today. Can you help me? I'll help you with such and such. They really have each other's back. That is what the guest can feel. The guest feels like that they're never going to just be ignored or left hanging. There's always, even if someone was helping them and that person has to take off for the evening, it's like they get handed to the next person in a way that is with a lot of kindness and care.

Rachel Alday
Having our retreat really helps solidify that because the team gets to really have these strong relationships, even newer people. I love it when there's someone new on the team, and a lot of times they'll be like, I don't know if I can come to the retreat because I think they're probably nervous. Everyone's really close and they're going to feel left out. But they come, and it's usually at the retreat where the newer person just gets fully integrated because it's like everyone is just there hanging out being their true authentic selves, like arm around each other by the campfire and everyone's got a glass of wine. People are funny and they do goofy stuff and you get to see who they really are.

Rachel Alday
It makes such a huge difference. I know a lot of companies do company retreats in all different ways, and I think there's a lot of ways to do it that are helpful. But I do think having that component where people get to just... If you were on a trip with your friends and family and not with the work component, but just having that sense of family with your team, it's incredibly, incredibly powerful. It's definitely helped for us with retention and also just with being able for everyone on the team to, like I said, have each other's back all the time, every day. I do think doing a company retreat for a company that has maybe 10 or more people, it's like, wow, it's so worth it. It's expensive, but man, is it worth it? I'm not even sure if I can think of a better way to spend money on our team than on a really good organized company retreat.

Heather Bayer
What I love about that is it says so much about the culture of your company. And then going back to what you're talking about, to this new element of extreme hospitality, how much do you feel that that culture, that personality of your company reflects in that growth in hospitality?

Rachel Alday
Yeah. As you're saying that, I was just thinking, it's the connection, right? It's like, let's say, the retreat. That is a place in a time where everyone the team is really connecting, talking to each other about real life and sharing back and forth on that human connection level, not for the purposes of work or making money, but just to feel connected and to feel like that's a part of being a human being. Then I think when you can exemplify that to the team through something like a company retreat, it really does. I think probably that makes it easier for them at work to understand how to connect with your customers. Because it's like, that's what I'm always trying impart to them. I want you to connect with the homeowners and the guests, and not just because you're trying to be 'fake nice' or you're just trying to make someone who's pissed off happy, because that's what we do. We want to really find out what makes them tick. Who are they? Then we want to tell them who we are, and we want them to care who we are, and we want to care about who they are, and just true connection. I think through company culture, where you can teach your team about connecting with each other and not having a work environment where it's 'work is work and friends are friends.' Like when I'm at work, I'm working and my social life is separate. I'm not saying go out and build a cult organization, but I am saying, and I say this to people when we hire them all the time, I don't want to hire people who just want to come to work and they don't want to have an additional relationship with their team. I want to have a team that comes to work and feels connected to the people they work with. I do think the Company Retreat is creating that, and then that's also teaching them how to connect with the customers.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. From everything you've said, I think you've answered your own question from earlier on about hospitality. It comes back to this cohesiveness and the loyalty and close-knit aspect of the team that then gets extrapolated out to all the other stakeholders, the guests and the owners, and no doubt your community as well. I cannot believe how the time has gone in this conversation.

Rachel Alday
I know, right? I know. I always say I have time blindness when I'm talking to people, and it is exemplified right here.

Heather Bayer
You are absolutely great to talk to. I love....

Rachel Alday
You are, too. Thank you.

Heather Bayer
I've loved this. I'm looking forward to when we get to meet again. And next time we're going to sit and talk about manifesting, because that's one of my favorite.

Rachel Alday
I'll come visit you, or you can come out to the mountains anytime you want. You just tell me when and where, I'll set it up.

Heather Bayer
That would be wonderful. Let's just wrap it up with your favorite books. What should people be reading?

Rachel Alday
Okay, so I have so many, but let's just do the top few. Okay, so obviously Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. This is a must. It is a great and easy read. Everybody, go out and listen to it or buy it. If you're not going to, write me a note and I'll send it to you because I have a huge company library. I do that library thing that Tony Hsieh did. I have tons of copies of all these books, so anyone who wants one, just tell me. Okay, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan and a couple other authors, but Dave Logan is the one I remember. The Four Agreements, it's Don Miguel Ruiz. I think it's so good. I just read, I think it's called The Big Little Things or The Little Big Things by Tom Peters. I just finished it recently.

Heather Bayer
I've got that one somewhere. Yes.

Rachel Alday
i love it. I love Tim Ferrace's book. It's Tools of Titans, and there's another one.....

Heather Bayer
I'm just looking back in my bookcase and I've got....

Rachel Alday
It's all of them?

Heather Bayer
The The Four-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans. Yes.

Rachel Alday
Yeah, these are all really good.

Heather Bayer
The Four-Hour Work Week.

Rachel Alday
Yes. Okay, you know what? Here's another one. This is off topic, but I feel like this book is a life-changer for a lot of people. The Body Keeps the Score. Have you heard of this book?

Heather Bayer
I have not. No.

Heather Bayer
I think it's like Bessel Van der Kolk is the author. This book is amazing. It's all about how dramatic things in our life affect our body and how it affects... And it sounds a little bit rough, but anyway, it's a really interesting book. Okay, and then one more, The Happiness Hypothesis. Can't remember the author's name [Jonathan Haidt]. He's amazing. And there's all this happiness psychology books out there. This one is very sciency, so it's not fluffy. It's a sciency read. It is so cool. It talks about all different things from the science side, not the manifestation stuff. This is more about looking at religion and looking at family connection and all these different things. And Happiness Hypothesis is a really good one. But yeah, I'll stop. I could go on. I am an obsessed book reader the last five or six years. It's a little weird.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I love my books. I've got stacks of them. I don't tend to pick them up and read one all the way through. It's just I've got half an hour, I'm going to pick up a book, I'm going to open it, and then see what comes out at me.

Rachel Alday
I listen on Audible. I obsessively listen to books, like when I'm working out, when I'm blow-drawing my hair, when I'm driving in the car, you name it, I'm listening to a book.

Heather Bayer
Don't waste a minute.

Rachel Alday
I can't. I swear, it's that or the podcast. All the podcasts for Vacation Rental themes, I'm obsessed on that, too. I don't know. I'm having a moment in my life where that's my thing.

Heather Bayer
Well, I'm going to make sure that all those books are listed on the Show Notes.

Rachel Alday
Oh, awesome.

Heather Bayer
So that if anybody's thinking about starting a library, and I love the idea that you have a library for your team, they can....

Rachel Alday
.... I recommend doing it for sure.

Heather Bayer
You recommend doing that for every company, you should do this.

Rachel Alday
My team listens. Yeah, they read the books, they listen to them. We pay them 150 bucks each time they read a book, and they just have to write a couple of sentences. And it's awesome to watch younger people. Here, I'm in my late 40s, and I'm finally doing it. And the younger people are learning it earlier. I'm like, yes, learn it now. Don't wait till you're in your midlife crisis. Start now.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. Rachael, it's been fantastic talking to you.

Rachel Alday
Yes, I agree. It was great talking to you.

Heather Bayer
Just such a pleasure. I will look forward to catching up again at a conference near us at some point over the next few months. But for now, thank you so much for joining me.

Rachel Alday
Thank you.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Rachel. What a great conversation. I love that. I love just this wide-ranging conversation that covers so many things. But really, everything that we were talking about did actually come back to company culture or the personality of a company. I would have loved to have gone to Park City and worked for Abode Luxury Vacation Rentals. It sounds like the most amazing place to work. And kudos to Rachel for creating that type of culture. And it's certainly showing as successful for her.

Heather Bayer
I'm sure If you've got any questions about that, that Rachel would be more than happy to answer your questions or share some of her experiences. I'll make sure that there is a link to her LinkedIn profile on the Show Notes so you can go check that out and connect with her.

Heather Bayer
Okay, that's it for another week. Gosh, these weeks flying by. We are just about into July, not far off July now. Before we know it it will be back into conference season again. I had said for 2024, not too many conferences. I've already been to three. I think we've got another four lined up. I know there are some people, Justin Ford, for example, who goes to every single one, and he's probably well into double digits for his conference year. We're trying to stick to four or five this year.

Heather Bayer
So if you see me at a conference as we go into the fall, please come say hello and share with me what you like, what you don't like about the podcast. If you don't go to a conference, you can do that by sending me an email at heather@vacationrentalformula.com. I would love to hear from you. On that note, I will leave for now and see you again next week.

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 Vacation Rental at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week..

‍