Mike Bayer
Welcome back to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, and as we get to the end of October there's something huge happening in the vacation rental world, and I don't want you to miss it. Whether you're managing a vacation rental company or you're an individual ready to start out in this competitive industry, I've got something that will change the way you think about onboarding and training.

Mike Bayer
THRIVE Essentials, our brand new course, is already making waves. Imagine turning your new hires into confident, capable team members in just a few hours, instead of weeks with costly on-the-job training. Or maybe you're someone looking to get hired in vacation rental management and want to show employers you're ready from day one. THRIVE Essentials gives you the tools and knowledge to do exactly that.

Mike Bayer
But here's the deal. Our special launch price ends soon. Once October is over, the price will go up, so now is your chance to get in at the lowest rate possible. Don't leave your business or your career to chance. This is your opportunity to create a winning team, stand out from the competition, and excel in this fast-growing industry. Visit our website or click the description in this episode and sign up for THRIVE Essentials and let's make sure you're thriving, not just surviving in the vacation rental world.

Mike Bayer
Now, let's get this episode started. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
So this month, we've been talking a lot about virtual assistants, remote workers, hiring, firing, and personality assessments, and I wanted to wrap it up with a discussion with one of the most experienced and knowledgeable people in our business today. And that's Steve Trover of Better Talent. We're talking about all things to do with getting the right people in the right seats and hiring impactfully from the start. This discussion could save you from the mistakes many who have gone before you have made.

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

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and I'm super excited as ever to be back with you once again. In a few days, I'll be off to Vermont, to the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance Conference, and I'm so looking forward to catching up with friends such as Tyann Marcink, Justin Ford, Sybille Kim from Villa Ausblick - haven't seen Sybille since 2016 at the first Vacation Rental Success Summit - and then Kerry Gibson from Chalets Hygge, and many more.

Heather Bayer
I love these smaller events because of the opportunities for really deeper networking and creating better relationships. There's just so much more time to sit down and chat to people. So I'm speaking at the event with my son and  business partner, Mike Bayer. We're doing a joint presentation, and we're talking about the top 10 pitfalls that managers shared in Brooke Pfautz's book, Vacation Rental Secrets. Incidentally, Brooke's just published a new tome called The Ultimate Tech Stack Guide, where he's polled 55 industry leaders to uncover the exact tech stacks they use to power their businesses. I'll put the link into the Show Notes so you can get a a copy of that.

Heather Bayer
Anyway, back to the Vermont conference. The session that Mike and I are presenting talks about the mistakes so many of us have made. One of them in particular stands out, and it really came sharply to mind when I was putting this presentation together, because so many people had mentioned it. It comes under the overall topic of Team, and that's expressed so well by Robin Craigen of Moving Mountains, when he describes his team as he says, Without them, we are nothing. And that's just a fact. It's just a fact. Brooke starts off the section in his book with his story of his own property management company, Vantage Vacation Rentals, and how over time, and by making some wrong choices, he realized this. And I quote, The most important thing I can do is recruit, hire, and build a good culture. What determines whether we are successful is the team we assemble, build, nurture, and develop. It's only taken me four startups in 25 years to finally figure this out. This sentiment was borne out by so many of the managers who contributed to the book. And in the book it then goes on to focus on four key elements: hiring, firing, training, and delegating. So to cap off our month, I invited Steve Trover from Better Talent to come along and talk about these topics and share how you can be more efficient and effective in the ways you build your team.

Heather Bayer
I am super delighted to have back with me once again, Steve Trover from Better Talent. It's always an absolute pleasure to have you on the show, Steve.

Steve Trover
Thank you so much for having me once again. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Heather Bayer
You always bring such great content, and that content is based on decades of knowledge and experience in the industry. So I think most people who are listening know that you're a property manager, you built All-Star Vacation Homes from nothing to 400 properties, and then there are all sorts of other companies that you grew along the way. But what I wanted to ask you is, as the founder of Better Talent, what made you enter that field? After all the things you've done in building property, building homes, design, furniture, and now Talent, what got you into the employment business?

Steve Trover
So, yeah, it's a really good question. And I started now 16 companies over the course of 34 years. And about eight years ago, when I got out of being a vacation rental manager, sold a group of companies, and wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next. And normally, or historically, I would start a company on top of a company, meaning I'd have one and I'd start a new one and still have the old one. Frankly, that's part of why I got out of property management. I got to do a challenging spot because I had five companies at one time, right? And so I decided not to do that, and instead, just started a small consulting firm with the intent of thinking through or taking some time to figure out exactly what that next thing was going to be. I wanted to be much more intentional instead of just chasing a shiny object and really think through what I could work on. And starting a business is solving a problem, right? And so for me, I ask myself a question, and what is the biggest problem that I've tried to solve or had to solve or maybe didn't solve along the way?

Steve Trover
And so I started thinking about that in the context of the different businesses I had started. I actually started my first company, exporting cars overseas, wasn't even anything to do with vacation rentals, when I was 17 years old. Went into clothing and a lot of different types of businesses prior. Then got into vacation rentals, real estate, development, technology, a number of different pieces and I thought, what was the hardest part of those businesses, or which one was the hardest, or really what was the hardest thing that I ever had to do. And when I thought about it, it actually was the same thing in every one of those businesses, and that was people. And when I had the right people in the right seats, and they were all rowing in the same direction, business was fun, business was easy. We ran world-class companies. We did really great things. When I didn't have that, which, quite frankly, was probably more than half the time, it was hard, it was challenging, and it was very difficult to execute on the vision. And no matter how much of a visionary you are and how many great ideas you come up with, if you don't have the right people on your team, it's really hard to execute.

Steve Trover
So that was the premise or the idea behind Better Talent. I'm really excited that I spent that time as opposed to what I had historically done. Like I said, I was just going, Oh, yeah, that's a great idea, let's go start that company tomorrow. And that was fun, but it definitely was not as intentional as it probably should have been. And so that was just a learning lesson on my part to spend the time to figure out what that problem is. It was also something that I saw that nobody was addressing in the industry. Frankly, nobody's really addressing for small business. When you think about recruitment and recruiting companies and staffing companies around the world, they primarily focus on large-scale companies, mid to large. Small business doesn't really engage with recruiters because they charge too much money. I really wanted to come up with a solution that worked for small business because that's where I've lived my whole life and probably will for the rest of my life. Not that we don't work with larger companies, but our core business, I mean some definitions consider anything less than 400 employees a small business, right? And so I've never had a large business in that number. So I had 100 employees at peak. So I really wanted to solve that. So I know that's a long answer to a short question.

Heather Bayer
You know, I hadn't heard you talk about that before. So it really puts it into perspective. You said something earlier that I hear an awful lot from people. It's about getting the right people into the right seats. And we're going to come back to that in a few minutes. But I wanted just to I wanted to ask you, first of all, what is the labor market like right now for people coming into the vacation rental business and for property managers who are seeking employees?

Steve Trover
Yeah, I would say it has improved from a client-side perspective in the sense that there's more available talent in some respects than there has been in recent times, incrementally more. And what I mean by that is we're still very close to an all time low as it pertains to unemployment. A lot of people think, all these layoffs, it's completely changed. It really hasn't changed all that much. I would say the quality of the available talent has improved in recent times in certain roles. Now, frontline, housekeeping, maintenance, inspectors, that type of thing, it's as challenging as it's ever been. I don't think it's changed much at all in that regard. It's really more of that mid and high level roles that has opened up some, where we really used to struggle with anything technology related, developers, that type of thing. That's opened up some. So there's some parts of the market that is improved, not from a talent perspective, but from an employer perspective. Just like real estate, there's buyer and seller markets, if you will. And it's definitely a more of a buyer market than it has been, but it's still I would say overall a seller's market, meaning the talent is more controlled in the market.

Heather Bayer
What's the percentage of people that come to you looking for jobs that have been in the industry compared to those who are perhaps looking for a career path in it?

Steve Trover
I would say, I don't know that we know that exact number. Probably that's a good metric we should start tracking. I would probably say it's about half and half right now. I really am excited to see more people seek us out, specifically Better Talent, to come into the industry. I think over the course of the last four and a half years, we've done a good job within the industry, created a brand where, if you're thinking about making a move in the industry, you're probably going to go to our website, you're probably going to reach out to us, and we hope you do, right? And so that happens. And while we're on this podcast, dozens of people will probably do so, right? And so that's great.

Steve Trover
But to your point, what started to happen is more people have found us that are looking to come into the industry, like specifically seeking it out. And this industry is unique in the respect that it doesn't... There's not, has been, not been education. You can't go to college or university for vacation rentals. I'm excited about what you guys are doing in that respect. And so I'm looking forward to that change, but overarchingly, you can't go to every university down the street and go get a degree. And so people don't necessarily think of it as a career path in many cases. And most of us, we joke around conferences about the fact that we all kind of fell into this industry, and I call it the Island of Misfit Toys, and I mean that in a positive way in the sense that we all just tripped into it, if you will. And so seeing people start to make the decision to come into the industry and seek us out has really been awesome to see. It's something that's a big part of what Better Talent wants to see happen. We want more talent to come into the industry.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I like that 50/50 statistic, even if it's not grounded in solid data. But I heard this from an HR manager in the industry a few months ago down in the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area. And I asked that question. She said, Oh, around 60% of the people that come to them are brand new to the industry because these are the people that are coming into that location. They're making lifestyle moves to the Gulf Coast. And then... I think in my mind, I thought, well, this is probably going to be this great churn of people going from company to company in this same location. But she said, no, that's not quite the way it is. They're seeing so many new people. So I was quite interested in that because I fell into it. And just about everybody I've ever spoken to over the 580 odd episodes of this podcast, when my first question is, how do you get into this industry? Oh I just fell into it. My parents had a vacation house, or I stayed in an Airbnb and loved the idea of doing it because I talked to the host. And it is this fall into it and before they know it, they're managing 20, 30, 40 properties and they've never really had any background in it.

Heather Bayer
And yeah, you're absolutely right. There is nothing out there. There's no college course. You can go and do hospitality and learn how to serve drinks and to work a reception desk or a concierge desk in a hotel. But we've seen this huge gap, and we're looking to fill it. Probably over the long-term, it's not something you can do overnight, is to create an accredited course. But you've got to start somewhere. And I think what we're doing with this basic essentials course is doing that, is creating this foundational course for somebody who's new to the industry.

Heather Bayer
But I wanted to move on to talking about those property managers who are out there thinking, I've made mistakes in the past, I've hired people, it hasn't worked out. You've probably heard this, too. People get into jobs and it's not right for them.

Heather Bayer
I was telling you the story when we spoke recently about our marketing assistant at our property management company that we took on because she had a diploma in marketing and just straight out of college. So we thought, Ah, diploma in marketing, you'll be a marketing assistant. And I'm not going to say how wrong we were because she was great at it, but I don't think she ever really loved it. And she was in there for eight or nine years. And it wasn't until we sold the company and six months later, she's the business development manager. And she's out there doing owner acquisition because that is her zone of excellence. Her zone of excellence was not marketing. I'm sorry, her zone of genius is in business development. The zone of excellence might have been in marketing. So how do you approach, or how do you speak to managers when they come to you and say, Oh, I think we've got the wrong people in these seats. What do we do about it?

Steve Trover
So I have a quote that I say, Best thing and the worst thing that I've ever done in business are the same thing. And that is to hire and retain people. And it was the best thing when I found the right person in the early stages of my career, that was definitely luck of the draw. I just accidentally found the right person, because I can tell you I didn't have a real structured way to do it. And then retaining that person, that was the best thing, right? It really worked. When I had the wrong person in the wrong seat, and then I kept them, it was the worst thing, right? And so your scenario wasn't working out. You made the right call and moved on. Some of us don't. And when I look back at some of my biggest mistakes, they're revolved around that, right? It's leaving somebody in that seat.

Steve Trover
And so when somebody has somebody in the wrong seat, the example you gave with the marketing person, she got a marketing degree. What's interesting about university today and going to college, is that you choose your major somewhere around 19 years old, 18-19, maybe right when you start college, or a couple of years then, So 18-20. The frontal cortex of your brain does not fully develop until you're about 23, 24, 25, depending on if you're female or male. A significant portion of your personality is in your frontal cortex. And so you think you might want to go down the path of marketing, and our construct forces you to choose that, when in reality, in this case, that person was more of a salesperson, not a marketer. And there's a big difference between a marketer and a salesperson. Marketing has a lot of analytics to it today. It's not the same. And a sales profile is different than a marketing profile when it comes to personality. And so what happened in her case is she ultimately, thankfully, landed in the right spot for her that she's designed for. And what I mean by designed, it's really personality alignment with the role. And so a lot of times when somebody comes in, they're like, Yeah, we're struggling to find the right person for the right seat. One of my first questions is, are you doing anything around personality testing? Are you understanding that person's drives and what drives them and where they would fit. And about 99% of the time, the answer is no.

Steve Trover
And that's across all companies, large and small and all the way up to very large-scale companies. If they do do personality testing, I hear a lot of the times where they're like, Yeah, we do it when we get down to the last two or three applicants, when we take it down to the ones we want to really look at. And so they do that by looking at their resume. And what I can tell you about resumes, it's not a good predictor of whether somebody is going to be successful. That person that worked with you in marketing, if she would have gone on to apply for another marketing position and she had it on her resume, so now, Oh, she's got a degree and she has experience in marketing. She must be great, right? Clearly not the right fit. And so instead of doing it, when you get down to the last few, we always recommend personality testing at the top of the funnel, because we want to find the person, the people that align with the role right out of the gates, and then start to look at the other metrics, such as longevity, experience, what they've done, because that's not as good a predictor as personality alignment.

Steve Trover
And then the other thing is for mid to high-level roles, cognitive ability. Marketing, again, today is a very high cog' exercise, requires a lot of understanding of technology, being able to learn new things quickly and adapt to change. And if that person's cognitive abilities don't align with the job, that's going to be a struggle for them as well. And so it's really looking at people data as you're going through and hiring somebody to make make sure that they align with the job. And then last but not least, it's just culture fit, right? Do they align with the core values of the business? And so I always ask, do you have culture fit questions? Do you have core values listed? Do you ask questions around those core values? And again, the answer is usually no. And so we work with our clients to do that. And whether you work with us or you do it yourself, those are the things that I highly recommend and lean on to help improve the batting average, if you will, of hiring. And why I say improve. There is no perfect way to hire. You're not going to get it right every time, no matter how good you are at it. And so we're working hard to improve that average, if you will.

Heather Bayer
So are these personality.... are they available to people to use? Because I know we've talked about Predictive Index, Culture Index, DiSC. Years ago, I was using Myers-Briggs. How accessible are they to the the property manager who's perhaps not even got their first employee?

Steve Trover
Absolutely. There are probably 800 different assessments out there, and there's everything from a very scientifically valid, like some of those that you just mentioned assessment down to Which [Disney] Princess Are You? on Facebook, right? And so my recommendation is, if you're going to use one, make sure you use one that's scientifically valid, that has had validity studies done on that. Behavioral science is a little different than physical science. Physical science, the computer screen I'm staring at, could be physically perfect. It's designed perfect. Behavioral science is not that, but a good-quality, highly tested assessment can be very, very accurate in understanding somebody's behavioral drives, and so it's just important to use one that is. There's those that are free all the way up to more expensive and extensive. We use the one we use because it's very accurate and it's very fast, because I want every applicant to do it right when they apply. And so are they accessible? Yes. There's many different ones, some of which you just mentioned, but there's probably hundreds that are valid. Not only should they be scientifically valid, they should be valid and approved for pre-hire selection. So there are some HR laws around that. You want to make sure that you're using one that's certified, that type of thing or you don't run into any trouble.

Heather Bayer
How do you mean run into trouble? What sort of trouble could somebody run into?

Steve Trover
Well, if there's bias in them that is not the type of bias that you should be using in hiring. Anything, race, age, religion, etc, those types of things can't be in the assessment. It needs to be specifically related to their personality.

Heather Bayer
So somebody who is searching around on the internet looking for a free personality assessment, they've got to be really careful as to what they're going to select to give to somebody to take.

Steve Trover
Exactly. And the other challenge with it is making sure that when you do assess somebody, you understand what you're looking for. So just because you have a personality look at it, you think that might be a good alignment with the role, it may not be. An example is, I started out 15 years ago now using an assessment that's similar to the one we use today, I went through a two-day workshop to learn how to use it, and all of a sudden, I had a certificate that said I was an expert. I can tell you I was more like a four-year-old with a block of knives, meaning I was dangerous. I was setting targets for roles based on what my knowledge of that two-day workshop said it was, and then I was filtering applicants from that. Frankly, I didn't know what I was doing. Looking back at it, I thought I did, because I remembered some of the targets I set. I looked back and I'm like, wow, I had that way off. And prior to COVID, I was traveling around the country with an I-O Psychologist, and we were doing those two-day workshops, training companies on how to use this assessment.

Steve Trover
COVID hits, and I start looking at my clients' job targets. And I realized that just like me, they were sometimes setting the job targets wrong. And so that was another impetus for Better Talent. I was like, Okay, we're going to have to do this for them. So, yeah, you can go get a free one. Looking at somebody's personality is better than not. But if you're going to use it, you got to at least... You spend the time to understand it or work with somebody who does. That would be my advice. And that's not a sales pitch for Better Talent. That's just me trying to give advice. Make sure you use it the right way.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I think if I look back over my experience of hiring, and I was always one just, I'm going to do it myself, I'm not going to pay somebody to do this for me. I know that I ended up spending way more, because we would hire the wrong people or put somebody in the wrong seat. They didn't last very long. And the time and the cost spent training them was just gone. That was done. They were out. And we're back on Indeed, looking for somebody else and spending hours and hours of precious time sorting through, as you say, sorting through resumes. And we had no clue as to what we were looking for in a resume. So I can make the plug for Better Talent, because I've gone through your process. I can see that had I done that way back, it would have been more cost effective.

Steve Trover
When people will ask how much we charge, I say we charge less for the cost of one bad hire, which is true. You hire one person and they're the wrong fit, and you take them all the way through that process of going through all the resumes, going through the screens, going through the interviewing, bringing them on board, taking them through training, and then within 90 days, they're gone. That's one of the most expensive problems you have in business, right? Not only does it cost you money to do that, it costs you precious time. And in this industry, time is everything, right? So that's, again, another reason why we started. It was to take a significant portion of the lift off of the managers to be able to do that right, to make sure that we help again to dramatically improve the batting average of where they're at. And again, people work with us. They take them all the way through the process, and sometimes it doesn't work out. We're talking about humans, right? So we don't have a perfect batting average ourselves, but we definitely dramatically improve that in the success rate of the Talent.

Heather Bayer
Let's talk about the different... Somebody's out there thinking, I need to take somebody on. Should it be full-time? Should it be part-time? Should I take on somebody remotely, because I'm not going to find somebody in my local area to come into our office? How do they start going about making that decision to start expanding their team? Because you want to do it right first time.

Steve Trover
Absolutely. And the biggest expense of a short-term rental/vacation rental company is the team, right? Whether that's a full-time, part-time, independent contractor, VA, whatever. If you look at the profit and loss statement of any company, large or small, it is roughly 40 to 60 % of the total cost structure. And so getting it right is imperative. That first hire is really expensive, right? All of a sudden, in some cases, people aren't even paying themselves. And now they're trying to hire somebody or they're paying themselves very little and don't want to give that up, understandably. And a business person that I met when I was really young, I was getting ready to hire my first executive assistant. I was trying to make the decision on whether I could afford that expense. And he said to me, and he's looking at what I was doing. And he said, Steve, you won't be able to afford that person until you have them. And what he meant by that is once I had that person doing the things I was not designed to do, I could go out and grow the business. And that's exactly what happened.

Steve Trover
And so looking at your business, when you're getting to that point where you're overwhelmed by doing all the things, one of my favorite exercises is to take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle and a line across, and put on the top left everything that you love to do, that you're really great at. Things that you would do for free. They give you energy. Put them all there. And then things that you like to do and you're okay at, to the right, don't really like to do and you're okay at, to the bottom left, and then don't like to do and not good at, on the bottom right. And what I like to say is hire for that bottom right quadrant, those things that drain you. You push them off because you don't even want to do them.

Steve Trover
In my case, for example, I wasn't great at finance. It's not that I don't like finance, and I'm really good at reading a P&L today and looking at it from that perspective. But me doing the work of building out Quickbooks, you don't want me doing that in your company, I assure you. And so nor do I. And so that and things like housekeeping management was just not what I was designed to do. And so my first hires were around finance and operations for that reason. And that freed me up to go and build the business, which I was good at, sales and marketing, and I enjoyed those things.

Steve Trover
And so that's what I recommend. And that might be the for someone else, right? So they may not be strong on the business development side or marketing side. They're really good at finance and operations. Then they flip flop that and they hire that person that's good in marketing or sales. And that's part of what we work with clients to do, whether it's the first hire or the fourteenth hire.

Heather Bayer
What about full-time, part-time, fractional? How does somebody make that decision at the outset? I want somebody to be there 40-hours a week, or is it 20-hours a week, or do I hire an executive fractionally, so I can have this really special person, but I'm not paying the full-time rate for them?

Steve Trover
Yeah. So it really comes down to this specific company and where it's at, its iteration. Generally speaking, when I see a very small startup and they're really getting to that 10, 15, 20, 25 property stage, now we've got to have some people. A lot of times today, they'll hire virtual assistants. So overseas workers, you can get them for far less cost than a full-time employee here in the US. And there's many, specifically in the Philippines and some other countries that are really strong and English and great and actually have experience in this industry. I have people on my team that have 20 years of HR experience. I don't, right? So that are over in the Philippines as an example. So that is a great way to do it. But it really comes down to the role that you're hiring for. For example, if it's operational in nature and it's boots on the ground, it can't be overseas. So it has to be somebody in the local market. And so it really comes down to that. As far as executive-level fractional, I would probably say you're going to hire more operational people first before you get to the point where you need somebody on the strategy side.

Steve Trover
And that's coming from a fractional chief strategy officer for several companies today. I would not advise an early stage company to do that right at the beginning. It's really when you get upwards of 50 to 100 properties, then you really need to think through your growth strategy and work with people. And there are people that will give you time to help you in that mindset, listening to podcasts like yours. There's a lot of going to conferences. There's a lot of ways that you can glean information on the overall strategy without having to bring somebody on in a fractional sense, early on anyways. And so, yeah, I think it really comes down to the individual, not to avoid the question, but that's what we do, is we look at it and assess Okay, what do you love to do? What do you hate to do? What does the company need first? And what I see more often than not, that's different than that, is companies will... They'll have a family member or a friend, and they'll just hire them to do whatever that person's good at. And so they don't really build the company based on the company's needs.

Steve Trover
They build it on the person they have in front of them. And I've been guilty of that. I had a lot of family members in my company, and we try to figure out where they fit. It worked out pretty well at the end, in most cases, but it doesn't work out a lot of the time. That's really not the best way to build a company out of the gates. Build the company structure first, and then put the right people in those seats. And I tell people that have zero employees and 10 properties to create an org chart. And they always look at me sideways and they're like, What do you mean an org chart? I'm like, Well, you're doing housekeeping, maintenance, guest services, owner communications, reservations, marketing, accounting, you're doing all the things. So build the organizational chart and then put your name on every one of those things. If you're doing all of them, if you have one or two other people doing some things, put their names on them. And then we start to peel off those hats, right? And say, Okay, we're going to hand that to somebody else. And that's how we go.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I like that idea of writing out the organization chart. I mean, we should all have 5-year plans and 10-year plans. So write out the organization. What does it look like in five years time? Are we going to have all these people? And then you put your own name in it because that's what you're doing right now. And I'm totally with you on that bottom right quadrant, which would have been finance for me, because our very first hire was a bookkeeper, because two years in and they were a mess, those books, and that was probably the best.... And we actually got it right very first time with our bookkeeper. She's still with that company, and I think it's nearly 20 years now. So Yeah, but I think that was definitely more by luck than judgment.

Heather Bayer
So question I wanted to ask was onboarding. What happened.... Oh, no, no. The first question I wanted to ask is about a job description. I know when we've done Indeed, we've done job descriptions on Indeed or even on Fiverr, I guess. We're just making this long list of things we don't like to do and expecting somebody to come along and do the whole lot. I don't like to do finance, but I also don't like to do data entry, and I also don't like to deal with customer complaints and guests complaints. And I don't want to get on the telephone. So I would list all of those out and expect one person to be able to come along and do the whole lot. How do you sort that out? How do you make some sense out of that type of mess? Because I think a lot of people are in that mess.

Steve Trover
Yeah. And there are certain things that align within a job description. And there are other things where it's like you're trying to identify somebody that is a cat and a dog, right? When that doesn't really work, right? And so if we're looking for a certain type of personality construct that will work with some of the things that you just mentioned, but not others, that's not going to work. And so we need a role that aligns with that individual or a type of individual that we can bring in to do those jobs. And so it can't be a mess of all the things we hate to do. So even though we do that bottom right quadrant, then we take out of that, extract out of that, the ones that align with one another and build the role around it. Frankly, even more than that is just build the whole structure. And in this case, we know we need a housekeeping manager at a certain scale. We need a maintenance manager or maintenance tech. We need housekeepers. We need a marketing person, those types of things.

Steve Trover
Having this operations manager that covers everything, a lot of people like to do that out of the gates. You can do it to some extent, but there's some components of it that just don't work with one another. The other thing I see people doing is they take all of that, those things, and they just, Here's all the things you're going to do, and here's what you're going to get paid. And they call that a job description. And a job description should be a structure around a specific role, task and duties. And then when you go to advertise that, you don't just throw the job description up with how much they're going to get paid. You put it together a job ad, and a job ad is different than a job description. Generally, they're a little shorter. Some people feel like they have to put in every single detail into the job ad.

Steve Trover
At the end of the day, what you're trying to do with a job ad is attract potential applicants to get them into the funnel. And so instead of saying, Here's what you're going to do, and here's what you're going to get paid, really start with, Why would I want to work with your company? What are the benefits of working with you? What's the vision of the company? Where does the company sit within the destination that you're in, those types of things. And so we encourage clients, we actually write them for them to write a high performing job ad that starts with that. Why would I want to work for your company? As opposed to you're going to clean houses? So it drives more people to read the whole thing, get into it. And that's another thing I see.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, like It's a landing page.

Steve Trover
Exactly. When you land on a property page, you don't go right into, It has a kitchen and a pool. No, you have a description first. It's an enticing description, well written that makes you want to stay.

Heather Bayer
Let's go on to onboarding then. So you've got this person. They walk in the door on the first day. How do you advise managers to plan out an onboarding strategy?

Steve Trover
So first of all, have one would be a good thing. So many companies don't. People show up the first day and they're like, Okay, here's your desk; good luck. And it's not quite that harsh, but it's really not well thought out. So developing a plan is critical. When I bring somebody into Better Talent, I like to say they know we're expecting them. And what I mean by that is they come in this door, and I'm at Better Talent HQ right now, and we fly them in - our whole team's remote - and they walk in the door, and there's a whole welcome package on the counter. There's a brand new MacBook. There's cards printed with their name on it already. And this is day one, right? They know that we're excited that they're joining the company just by that alone, right? And then from there, it's really introducing them to the team, spending time with them.

Steve Trover
When I used to bring people into my vacation rental company, every time a new hire came in, I met them first day and I had a PowerPoint presentation I would go through And I would give them the vision of the company. Here's who we are, here's why we started, here's where we're going. I would then give them a tour and introduce them to the whole team, right? From there, they would do ride-alongs. So if they were in maintenance, they did a housekeeping ride-along and they went to the marketing meeting, and stuff that they would never have anything to do with on a go-forward, so that they could understand the whole scope of the business. And I can tell you, if you do that really well, the likelihood that that person is going to stay with you and perform better is so much higher, it's not even funny. It's really critical and imperative to get onboarding right. They say the number one reason for churn in the first 90 days is about onboard.

Heather Bayer
So what else goes? You talked about the first couple of days. What about training? Because I know when we took people on, we had no real training plan. It was, You go sit with this person and they'll tell you their little bit of the business. Then you go and sit with this person. And I think looking back, there was no real mentorship. There was no one person that was... I mean, we were a very small company. When we sold it, we still only had nine employees in-house, not counting housekeeping, maintenance, etc. But looking back, I know we made some really serious mistakes in terms of bringing people in, because it took a long time to really get to grips with what the business was about and how it all hung together.

Steve Trover
So I started much the same, or probably worse in the sense that in the early stages of my vacation rental company, there was no training. It was essentially what I described, come in, sit down here's your desk and good luck. Pretty quickly, I realized that that was not going to work and started to develop out the onboarding process and then training, all the way to the point that we had a training facility, a training room if you will, in our operations center, and we would bring in all sorts of different types of trainers for different things and have off sites and whatnot. I won't even tell you, though, even within that construct, that we did it as well as I think you should. Training is really important. Training really comes down to the individual role. But first and foremost is having an understanding of the industry. Training on the industry is imperative, which is why I'm so excited about your Essentials product. I think it's going to be absolutely game-changing for the industry to have that and for them to be able to be understanding the nomenclature that's used, all the different... What's a PMS?

Steve Trover
So you come into this industry and you think it's something else altogether. And so I think that that's going to be really, really imperative Most companies don't have that type of training, even if they have training, it's usually specific to the role. So more broad-based, I think, is key. Understanding the company and then individualized training relative to the role is imperative. And there's a lot of different ways to do that today. If you do it in-house, there's learning management systems. But we're stretched in as an industry, right? We've got a lot of lean teams, and so it's challenging to get through all of that. But it's very important to train people. If you don't, you're going to do it their way, and that might not work.

Heather Bayer
So, crystal ball now, looking ahead, how do you see the hiring landscape changing in the next 5-10 years or so? Are you seeing patterns and trends now that are going to develop over the next few years?

Steve Trover
We are definitely moving further and further into a global workforce, and any role that can be outsourced overseas, it seems to be happening more and more. I don't personally believe that a lot of roles should be. There are certain ones that are phenomenal, and we're a proponent. We do a lot of hiring overseas. But then there are others, I think, that do need to be localized. And so I almost think we're over-correcting in that respect in some cases. That's a trend. One of the biggest challenges today is that people no longer look to have a job for 10 years. They hop a lot more. And I've got some of my friends that are, like myself, getting older in their years. They're looking at resumes going, wow, that person's never been anywhere for more than two years. And what they don't realize is that person is 28 years old, and that's typical of that generation. And so I hire people knowing that they might not be here long-term, and that's going to have to be okay. And that's why that training, by the way, is really important, because if they're going to churn more often than they used to, then you better have training to bring on the new one.

Steve Trover
That said, we hire people hoping they're going to stay. And, knock on wood, we've got 100%. We've had zero turnover in four and a half years, which is fantastic, but it's going to happen eventually, right? So you've got to plan for that. And so I see that as a big challenge going forward is not less but more people hopping from one to the next gig work is huge. So not just overseas workers, but localized gig work is a big thing and great that there's platforms to be able to do that for certain scenarios. I have people come to us all the time. I have a client say, I want a full-time revenue manager, and they've got 62 properties. And I'm saying, I don't know that you're quite ready for that from a cost structure perspective. It's probably better to have a fractional. So fractionalized workers will be work with a lot of the folks in the industry and refer out clients for that. We actually give up money sometimes that we might make on placement just to tell them to go to one of our partners in that regard, simply because it's the best thing for the company. And so I see a lot more fractional work coming.

Steve Trover
You said 5-10 [years], the robots are coming.

Heather Bayer
Oh, gosh.

Steve Trover
They are. Elon will tell you they're next year, but Elon has a tendency to say things are coming a little before they are, hence the cybertruck, right? But I think they are coming, and it's going to be interesting, to say the least, right?

Steve Trover
So I think a lot of the repetitive task roles will start to see robots come in in the course of next 5-10 years, and I think it's going to be spectacular. Quite frankly, I'm a technologist and a futurist, so I'm excited about it. And what I'm also excited about is those folks that are doing those roles now will do different and better things. Technology has never reduced the amount of people at work. And all the technology that we've had, and all this AI. I did a post recently, and I can't remember the exact number, but there's a couple of million people in the United States employed in artificial intelligence. So think about that. Everybody is so worried AI is going to replace us, but 2 million people are working in artificial intelligence. It didn't exist all that long ago. So technology doesn't take away jobs. It just changes.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I love that concept that in 10 years time, there'll be jobs that we have no names for right now.

Steve Trover
Don't even know they were going to exist. Can't even think about them in our minds right now. I like to think of myself as a visionary. I can't tell you what half of who are going to be, but looking forward to what they are.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I'm quite pleased that I'm at that stage now where I don't have to worry about what I do with my leisure time.

Heather Bayer
Steve, this has been a great conversation. Before I let you go, I just want you to share just one big piece of advice that you'd give to a property manager who's out there looking to grow their team. They've been listening to this and they think, well, okay, I'm going to do something.

Steve Trover
Don't do it by osmosis. And what I mean by that is I see it every day of the week. I talk to managers, they come in, they've got a challenge, and that is they just found a human that would work. Might be a friend, might be a family member, might be the first person that knocks in the door that can follow the mirror. And be very, very intentional about building your team. I'm saying that as somebody that made that mistake myself. I ultimately built a great team and do that at scale today, but I was not intentional at the beginning. And so when you jump into this thing, and like we said, nobody goes to school for it. So, yeah, get ready to change. But you got to be intentional. You got to really have a plan, whether you work with us or do it on your own, use AI, whatever you do, have a plan. You've got a business plan, have a people plan.

Heather Bayer
That's a great segue back to what I was talking about, doing this presentation that Mike I will be doing at Mount Snow next week because we're talking about these 10 pitfalls or these 10 mistakes that managers made. And what came out loud and clear from all of that, that if they'd gone into this business with intention in so many areas, then it would have been not grandly changing, but it would have made things happen quicker.

Steve Trover
Yeah, and you would have made less mistakes, right? And I know that book that you referenced earlier, When Brooke reached out and said, Hey, I need your top 10 mistakes, I'm like, Only 10? I don't know how I can whittle it down to that. And everybody's that way when you come into this thing. And so learn from others, read, but be intentional, like we say. It's very, very important. Otherwise, you'll just be making decisions on the fly without a lot of thought.

Heather Bayer
Well, this has been such a great conversation. Anyone who wants to find out more about Better Talent and to learn more about how to hire impactfully and effectively and with intention can go find out from Steve.

Steve Trover
Absolutely, bettertalent.com.

Heather Bayer
All that information will be on the Show Notes. So until I see you again, Steve, thank you so much once again for joining me.

Steve Trover
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Steve, for sharing all that knowledge and wisdom with us. All that experience of being in the industry for so many years has certainly given Steve such an insight into what makes a really good team. I certainly endorse checking out Better Talent. It's a process that we're going through. It's taking us a bit of time, which is absolutely fine. But we have been through the process of Better Talent working with us to create a job description. We haven't got to the point where they're looking for somebody for us, because we've just held back for a bit. But I have full confidence that once we get to that point, that they will find exactly the right person for the seat we have in mind.

Heather Bayer
And it just took me back to the times that I spent in my property management company looking for new staff and creating what I now know to be a job advert, not a job description, and putting it out there on Indeed, and then fielding just the hundreds of applications from people that were completely not right for the job we had in mind. And then we made our shortlist, we did the interviews, and on a couple of occasions, we got it really badly wrong. And people just did not It didn't last very long. We had a high churn rate in terms of the new staff we were taking on at one point. So I certainly see the value in having a professional company do this for you. And given the outlay in terms of the time that we spent on filtering through all those job applications and creating that job advert, it's well worth it. So if you want to get in touch with Steve or one of his team, then just go to the links in the Show Notes and everything will be there, and you can do that.

Heather Bayer
So as Mike said right at the beginning, and Steve mentioned, we are just about to launch the THRIVE Essentials Program, which we think it's pretty ground-breaking. It's a foundational course for people who have never been in this industry before. It teaches them that Airbnb is not the be-all and end all of this business.

Heather Bayer
I spoke to somebody recently, it was just some random person that I was talking to who didn't know much about the industry. And as they all do, anybody that has heard of vacation rentals or short-term rentals, after about 2014, thinks it was Airbnb. And she said, Oh, so that's Airbnb then? They own the properties, don't they? And I was just flabbergasted. No, they don't own the properties. There are people out there who own these homes. And I went into a fairly detailed explanation. I think I got on my soapbox for a little while and left her in no doubt as to what Airbnb actually is as an advertising platform.

Heather Bayer
But this is it, this is people are coming into this industry thinking that that's what Airbnb are. They are the backbone of the industry. Well, it's not. It's the property managers and the hosts and the homeowners that are actually the backbone of this industry. So that's part of what we are teaching in the THRIVE Essentials Course. We also share what a property management company actually is. We provide a glossary of all the terms, abbreviations, and acronyms that anybody is likely to hear. We talk about values, about trust, about responsibility, and about hospitality. And we talk about standards in the industry. And we share information on sustainability, inclusivity, and safety amongst other factors that are perhaps not as readily known to people outside of our business.

Heather Bayer
So if you want to know more about the THRIVE Essentials course, please follow the link in the Show Notes, or you can simply go to vacationrentalformula.com and you can find out more there.

Heather Bayer
Well, that's it for another week. I'm super excited, as I said at the beginning, to be heading to Vermont in a couple of days, and I will be letting you know how that all went when I get back. So thank you so much for sharing your time with me, and I'll look forward to being with 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 vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.

Join Heather Bayer on the Vacation Rental Success podcast as she explores virtual assistants, hiring, and team building with Steve Trover of Better Talent. Discover how to hire impactfully today!

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