Mike Bayer
Welcome back to the Vacation Rental Success podcast. It's Mike Bayer, CEO and co founder of the Vacation Rental Formula Business School, and I'm thrilled to share the fantastic response we've had to our newest training program, THRIVE Essentials.

Mike Bayer
Launched in October of 2024, THRIVE Essentials is designed to be the ultimate onboarding tool for vacation rental property management teams. It's perfect for quickly bringing new hires up to speed, cutting down on training time, and ensuring they have the essential knowledge to thrive in their new role. With THRIVE Essentials, your team members gain the foundational skills they need to be effective contributors faster, building confidence, loyalty, and job satisfaction right from the start.

Mike Bayer
The feedback from property managers and HR teams has been overwhelmingly positive. Many are saying they wish they had had access to this program years ago. Enroll your new team members in THRIVE Essentials today, and you'll see how quickly they adapt, contributing with confidence and being effective within days. For more details, visit the link in the Show Notes or head to vacationrentalformula.com to see how THRIVE can transform your team.

Mike Bayer
Now, let's get into today's episode. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
In this episode, we're talking about AI and what it can do for us practically in our different roles in property management. Just about every platform we use now has AI functionality, and every day there's new programs coming out to make work life easier. But that in itself can get very confusing and challenging. So my guest today is Kate Stoermer, whose consultancy, The CEO Host, helps business owners and property managers navigate the challenges of short-term rental operation. So I'm asking her how she uses AI and what tips she has for you. There's some great content here, so listen up.

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

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer. And as ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again. And as November creeps on towards Thanksgiving, the weather here in Ontario is getting a bit cool. We're expecting our first snow very, very soon. So, yeah, it won't be long before Christmas, and then I'll be heading down to Alabama for the winter for January, February, March. I think by that time, I will have had enough of Ontario cold and we'll be ready to get there.

Heather Bayer
So like many people, I'm obsessed with AI right now. I'm exploring CustomGPT, Claude Projects, and then Gemini and Perplexity. I'm watching a ton of videos. I'm listening to podcasts. And I'm using AI to do a lot of things for me at the moment to manage my podcast workflow, and that ensures I don't miss a step along the way. I'm using it to create schedules and make sure I remain on track. And it now uses my voice to draft blog posts and write articles. So I can then take those and put my personal stamp on them. And it makes life so much easier. What it's not doing right now is creating my podcast like I'm doing now. This honestly is me, this is my voice. I'm sitting here in front of my computer and recording this. This is not AI, although, that's going to come, isn't it?

Heather Bayer
But anyway, I'm using it a lot and I'm learning a lot about it, but it can be really confusing to know what to use for which task and how to set it all up to maximize time and efficiency. So when I was at the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance Conference a couple of weeks ago, I stepped in at the end of a session and I heard the speaker talking about a couple of uses of AI that I hadn't considered before. I mean, these were aha moments. So I wanted to talk to her about how she integrates AI into her business and what works best for each task that she does.

Heather Bayer
So Kate Stoermer is the founder of The CEO Host. It's a coaching and consulting business focused on empowering short-term rental owners to bring their best to everything they do. Kate is a US Navy veteran. She's got over 20 years in healthcare administration, a nonprofit leadership, and holds an MBA, so she's supremely experienced in business management. She's also actively involved in shaping Michigan's short-term rental industry as a founding member of the Michigan Short-Term Rental Alliance. And to round it all off, she owns and operates her own short-term rental portfolio. That is a lot of knowledge. I'm really happy that she's going to share some of it today with us as we talk about AI. So without further ado, let's step on over to the interview.

Heather Bayer
So I'm delighted to have with me today, Kate Stoermer, The CEO Host. And Kate and I met at the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance Conference, in Vermont obviously, a couple of weeks ago. And I just got in at the end of your presentation, Kate. You were talking about AI, and you said something that we are going to cover. But I know my son and business partner who sat next to me, he just shouted out because it was like this great aha moment that we hadn't ever thought about. And it was something so simple. So you're going to be sharing that with our audience today, as well as a lot of other things. So thank you so much for joining me.

Kate Stoermer
I'm delighted to be here for sure. Thanks.

Heather Bayer
I do not know how we haven't met before, actually, because you've been in this business a while, and I've been in this business for a while. But often it works out like this, doesn't it? You suddenly come across people at a conference and you're introduced, as we were. We were introduced by Tyann Marcink, who is the ultimate in networkers and referrers. So yes, I wouldn't have been able to come away without Tyann introducing me to some new and great people. So I'm really glad we had that opportunity to meet and chat there. And as I said, sat in on your, unfortunately, just the tail end of your presentation. But before we get into that, can I start by asking you, what got you into this business? It's the question I ask every single guest, and I always love the responses. I'm sure yours is not going to be any less interesting than all of the others that have gone before.

Kate Stoermer
For sure. And I'm going to tell you that I think at the Spring Forum at VRMA in 2022, I sat in the audience and you were a panelist. So that was actually the first time I really... And I was very new. So it ties in because I got into the industry. I spent most of my professional life in health care. I'm trained as a health care administrator, and I got my MBA along the way and worked in progressively responsible positions until I was the executive director of a nonprofit cancer research organization for many years, and was in that industry for much longer than that. And I'd always been a fan of real estate and eventually got into this idea that I could invest in real estate and leverage that interest. And I even started mentoring under somebody multifamily. And I was like, this is no fun. Where's the fun part? I have a job I don't need a job. And I was quickly... I got pulled into this idea of a short-term rental that I could take my family to a couple of times a year. It would move the needle in retirement, get us some cash flow.

Kate Stoermer
And that was the start of my journey back in 2018/2019. And I joined a paid membership. And actually, in my free time, besides raising children and working the 60+-hour work week and traveling all over the place, I actually started working just as a side hustle as a coach in that program and discovered that it was really fun and energizing and really sparked my interest to work with other people that were getting started or really trying to go somewhere in the industry with their own portfolios. And I think because of my training and my experience as a business executive, it was really easy for me to excel in that.

Kate Stoermer
And increasingly, I saw myself wanting to leverage that interest and passion that had phased out a little bit in my health care career. And also seeing people who were able to leverage their interests in the short-term rental space and leave their day jobs. And actually in 2022, right about the time I first had exposure to you, I suppose, I did quit my career. We were at a point where I could, and that provided us the flexibility as a family that I could be more present with my family, which was something that was a big goal for us, and I could probably make a living and hang a shingle.

Kate Stoermer
And that's the point at which I hung my shingle as The CEO Host, where I just pour myself into... I'm an educator at heart, so sharing what I know to help others be successful. And that has churned into, I work with a lot of... I do a lot of business coaching for folks in the short-term rental space, in addition to just working one-on-one with people, continuing to do that in term of.... I'm also a data girl, so understanding income potential, which was the presentation I was doing when somehow we got off onto AI, right? So that's where we're at today.

Heather Bayer
So do you have your own properties?

Kate Stoermer
I absolutely do have my own properties, and I also manage - the term would be co-host - for a couple of other properties, too. But most of my focus is really in being the coach, consultant, and educator.

Heather Bayer
Okay. So you're in Michigan, right? It's an area I know, Ann Arbor. My niece lives in Plymouth, but she lived in Ann Arbor, actually, when she first got married. So I spend a lot of time out in that area. It's very beautiful. So whereabouts are your properties?

Kate Stoermer
So I am on both coasts of Michigan. We actually have, second to Alaska, we have more coastline than any other state.

Heather Bayer
That's amazing. I know that here in Ontario, because we're your next door neighbor, we brag about our lakes. We've got 250,000 lakes and something like 600,000 miles of river. But yes, we are seemingly landlocked, but waterbound as well.

Kate Stoermer
Yeah, it does make that... I think in Michigan, you can't drive 80 miles without hitting a great lake.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. I need to spend more time exploring Michigan, but you've got the the same climate as we do. So I don't have a great deal of time to spend up here. But one day I'll do a bit more exploring over there.

Heather Bayer
We are going to talk about AI in this session. Do you recall what it was that you shared in that session that got Mike leaping out of his seat and having his aha moment?

Kate Stoermer
I do. It is one of the great benefits of AI, and that was I think somebody had just asked a question about regulations and the role they play in terms of choosing a market. And I just dropped the idea that resonated with several people that if you are trying to gauge regulations in a particular market, what I advise people to do to be really efficient about it, is to download meeting minutes from town council meetings and/or download their current zoning ordinances and put those in ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to review those and tell you if short-term rentals or transient rentals - I usually use different keywords for that prompt. That way, I mean, it's what used to take quite a bit of time is about maybe five minutes.

Heather Bayer
Yes, it resonated with me because when I was a property manager in Ontario for 20 years, and we had so many different areas, different municipalities that we were covering. It was like whack-a-mole. You deal with regulations popping up in one area, and you just get those sorted out and go to all the meetings and make our case and hopefully do some good. And then that was all settled, and then another one would pop up. And just having that tip, because that's what we were doing, because we couldn't attend every one of the meetings in the 14 different municipalities that we had rentals. If I'd known that, if we'd had ChatGPT then, which we did not, just that simple thing of downloading those minutes and interrogating ChatGPT and asking the question, has short-term rentals, or as you say, transient rentals or other keywords, been mentioned at any time in the past or over the period of these minutes? It was just so simple, yet a very profound tip. And thank you for that. And I'm sure now that everybody's heard this one, there's a few more people out there talking the same.

Heather Bayer
I mean, you know short-term rental regulations. You're a founder member of MISTRA, which is, I'm assuming it's Michigan Short-Term Rental Alliance or Association.

Kate Stoermer
Association, yeah.

Heather Bayer
So I mean, do you have, just going off topic slightly, do you have lots of different municipalities and township that do the same? Do they operate independently?

Kate Stoermer
Yes. So the state of Michigan has no statewide regulations at this time. We are coming to the end of the seventh year in a row that they've been proposed, but haven't passed. I often describe it a little bit like it's the Wild Wild West where every municipality is defining what a short-term rental is differently and regulating it differently and operating at a different set of principles and understandings around them. So wearing my hat as actually the President of the Michigan Short-Term Rental Association, it is a daunting task, and we have to find the shortcuts where we can.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Oh, well, all power to you for doing that, because not everybody wants to get involved with something that's nowhere near as exciting as finding new linens or creating some themed room.

Kate Stoermer
We definitely try to mix that up a little bit because otherwise, you do suffer from burnout for sure.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Well, let's move on to AI because you came up with a couple of other suggestions for people as well, one about reviews, and maybe we'll come into that, too. But there's so many AI tools out there, and we've all heard of things like, I think most people have heard about ChatGPT, maybe Claude, maybe Gemini, maybe Perplexity, and others. But it's overwhelming. It's already overwhelming to me just to talk about those names. So what advice, when you're talking to business owners, do you give them when they're trying to figure out what AI tools that are actually worth their time? Should they dabble in one or all of them? Or, what do you recommend to the business owners that you talk to?

Kate Stoermer
Yes. So when I talk to business owners and founders, the challenge we're typically trying to address is how to free up their time. And I think the biggest piece of advice, first and foremost, is it takes time to learn new tools, right? And more tech doesn't mean better. So I always work with people from that place of, our job isn't to make things more complicated. And so often it's something as simple as identifying in their current workflow and being able to say, Hey, here's a way that I think we could automate that. So you don't have to spend money to bring in an admin assistant. Maybe it requires a little bit more effort up front, but at the end of the day, and a lot of times, as you know, it's just an awareness. It's just thinking about, Oh, that's an interesting way I could use that.

Kate Stoermer
So a lot of times when people are working with a business coach in small business, so it's well understood in the academic circles around small businesses that step from the first 18 months of a business into the growth cycle for a business, the key issue there is getting the founder who's doing everything, right? And we see this time and time and time again with property management founders and companies is how do we get the people using their skills in the area where they excel and where they want and offload some of those other things. And so AI can be really helpful with doing that.

Kate Stoermer
So I think about it from, okay, one use of AI, and you just mentioned several tools that can be helpful with this, is when you have blank page paralysis and you're thinking about something as unsexy as writing down procedures, so maybe you can bring in a VA or an employee, it's actually a great way to use something fairly easy like ChatGPT or Claude, because you can just... You and I conversationally could say, Well, what do you do in your own onboarding? You could tell me in a meeting, we could download that as a transcript, we could feed that into ChatGPT and say, Could you turn this into a procedure? And boom, you have a procedure.

Heather Bayer
I think what a lot of people forget when they're doing that, is that they could actually... You don't have to sit there and think about what you have to give it. That's something I learned recently is just ask ChatGPT to ask you the right questions, because that's often the hardest thing. How do I start?

Heather Bayer
I've been into ChatGPT, and I did it for my podcast workflow because we were missing things. Things would drop out and go through the cracks. So it knows about podcast workflows. I just said, I'd like to create a podcast workflow. What would you like to know from me before you start doing this? And I got this long list of questions, and I just filled in the answers and gave it back. And it had this wonderful podcast workflow, which we've then worked on and honed down, and some pieces we've taken out and other pieces ChatGPT has recommended we put in. So that's just one example. Give me another example of creating an SOP, because I'm very conscious that a lot of people in this business don't have SOPs, particularly these entrepreneurs that I'm sure you work with. They have everything sitting in their heads.

Kate Stoermer
That is typically..., again, because I tend to get pulled in for folks who are, it's maybe just them, or maybe them and a couple of part-time people or something. So it literally is all in their head.

Kate Stoermer
So another one would be What's your process for managing receipts? Because a lot of times this often becomes an issue for folks who maybe they're on the road or maybe they've got people in the field who are doing inventory and buying things. And so can we not make that a shoe box of receipts or a bunch of stuff cluttering up your email? Let's talk about that process. And again, it's just a matter of... So you can brain dump that. And then just as you described, you can even ask ChatGPT or Claude or whomever you're using. And by the way, I prefer ChatGPT for procedural kinds of things.

Kate Stoermer
If somebody is asking, what's the difference? So they're very similar. I'm most familiar with Claude and ChatGPT. Claude tends to have a more human voice, and I like that for more marketing and where it needs... But ChatGPT has their algorithms and their training, and their statistical models are a little bit more robust for more complicated things. So for things like procedures and stuff, I really like ChatGPT. So I think that is another great example. It's just you can hone in just on receipt management, or you could even create an entire financial management plan. If you really want to think about how you do that, there's just so many uses for it in terms of doing that. And I think a lot of times, though, it's just not to do it all at once. It's wherever the problem point is.

Kate Stoermer
You just described, We were dropping the ball on podcast stuff, so we decided it was time to spend a little bit of time looking at that workflow and making sure that it works, and then getting the people who are going to actually execute on it trained, because that takes time, too. So it doesn't have to happen all at once. We want to fix the pain points and fix it once instead of every time we repeat the same mistake.

Heather Bayer
You made a couple of interesting points there about the difference between ChatGPT and Claude, which, in general, there's not a huge amount of difference. ChatGPT is OpenAI, and Claude comes from Anthropic, which I believe is part of Amazon now. Is it Amazon or Google?

Kate Stoermer
Google, I think. Yeah.

Heather Bayer
Not that that's particularly relevant, but I'm doing my exploration into Claude at the moment, because I haven't been using it much. So my current focus is on Claude Projects versus CustomGPT. Can you just talk about... You're going to scare people. I know. So should we talk about CustomGPT?

Kate Stoermer
So if you're brand new to AI, this is probably not for you. But yeah, so I'm curious How are you using them?

Heather Bayer
The difference between ChatGPT and Claude in that area is that ChatGPT can access the web, but in Claude Projects, it can't access the web. So that's probably, as you say, made it really complicated and complex to somebody who has no idea what we're talking about. So for example, we use CustomGPTs to create a process that we use over and over again. So for example, we have a new product called THRIVE Essentials, which is a course for people who are brand new to the industry. And we're looking at marketing that course. So we've gone to CustomGPT, and we've given it every bit of script that is in that course, everything that we've done to create that course because you're able to add files. And then we've created instructions that says, please act as our Marketing Manager and create a marketing strategy for promoting this course. And because we've been able to upload all of this material, it has absolute access to everything that we've done. And a CustomGPT, to me, it just puts everything in one bucket. Rather than starting a new chat every time we want to create an email campaign, we can just go into that CustomGPT and everything for that particular topic is already there.

Heather Bayer
Does that make sense? Have I explained that well enough?

Kate Stoermer
So I use it in an almost identical way, actually, for marketing purposes, where I've given it specific course materials and brand guidelines and all of those things. And that way I can just go to that GPT and generate marketing content.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Basically, you don't have to reiterate it every time you go into a new chat. I think that's the beauty of it. I'm exploring Claude Projects, which is very similar to ChatGPT, because I've been learning from podcasts and from videos and all the immersion I've been doing in this over the past couple of weeks that it has improved for this purpose. For example, we're doing an event online event, called STIR Crazy Month next February. That's when we focus over five weeks on the real fundamentals of the business, which is just sustainability, safety, trust, insurance, and regulations. So a week for each of those. We did it in February of this year. We're doing it again in February 2025. I've brought in all the materials from February 2024 and put it into a Claude Project. Now, Claude is not going to go out to the web to look for other stuff related to that, just going to look at what I'm giving it in terms of content to help create a strategy for promoting it.

Heather Bayer
Anyway, I'm doing all the talking and I really came to you for the... It's because..., can you tell I'm excited about AI.

Kate Stoermer
Yeah. And I think this is real world. This is people want to understand. So if I were in my property manager hat, can you use a GPT or a Claude Project for something in that realm? Because you and I both just talked about using that for our other kinds of businesses, right?

Heather Bayer
Having said that, we all do marketing. We all market and promote what we're doing.

Kate Stoermer
So it does have some similarities. That's what I wanted to say. I think that's one great use case for AI is, again, especially when you're smaller and you don't have the budget to bring in the a bigwig marketing manager, I think that you can do a really good job. And one of the pieces of advice that I really wanted to give it, though, is that you can say to a GPT or ChatGPT, however you choose to go about crafting your messaging, if there's a marketer or a brand that particularly resonates with you that you want to replicate, you can give that instruction. I want you to take my material, but I want you to be similar to whomever it is, or a multitude of others. And you can give it your brand guidelines. I think there's all these ways that you can leverage that to help you streamline that process, make it easier. And all ultimately, this is another use case that we can use it for. So we've been talking about - the term would be generative AI, right? So these are, we ask questions, we give instructions, and we look for output.

Kate Stoermer
At the beginning of this, you I mentioned, Perplexity AI, right? This is another one that I use all the time. And if you are new to AI or you haven't really thought about all these different ways, what Perplexity does, in some ways, it can replace Googling it. So if you're a Google Chrome user, which is what I typically use, we used to Google something, and we still do, and you would get a series of websites. And then being a slightly more mature woman, I remember the days where it was just a list of websites, and then eventually it became a whole bunch of sponsored websites, and then all of the more organic answers. And now there's a little AI summary at the top, right? And Perplexity AI is the same thing. So Perplexity AI can real-time go out into the web, and it will synthesize those results and allow you to not have to read through five pages of search results to get to an answer.

Kate Stoermer
And so the other day, I was struggling with... I needed to know how to achieve a specific task in a piece of software. And I could have logged into the software and Googled the tutorials or whatever. All I did was just type to my question and to Perplexity AI. And it not only gave me the answer, but it also gives me a way to link into where that answer is. And that feels like you don't have... I could go to the website and figure this out, but in our busy lives, that's one less step that I had to take. And so I actually keep Perplexity AI as my first go-to, even on my phone these days. I start there if I'm going to do a Google search.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. And I think that's quite a step for people to take. I mean, we've had so many years of you just Google it and to actually come out and go, Oh my gosh, I can do this somewhere else and I'm not going to get all the sponsored ads. I'm just going to get the information that I want synthesized into one document. The other one I'm using currently is NotebookLM.

Kate Stoermer
Okay.

Heather Bayer
I don't know if you use that much.

Kate Stoermer
I am not familiar with this one. No.

Heather Bayer
Okay. NotebookLM is... You can feed into NotebookLM, web pages, YouTube videos. So it's great for research, audio, PDFs, just all the information you can feed it in to NotebookLM and then interrogate the entire collection of material that you've just given it. The other thing that NotebookLM does is, if you like listening to things, if you like audios, you can feed all this information in and then it will create a podcast for you out of all that information with two people discussing it. And it is... You've got to try it, Kate, if you haven't tried this, you've got...

Kate Stoermer
Okay, you just sold me on this one.

Heather Bayer
The first time I listened to this, I thought, this is crazy. How can it do this? Because these are two genuine voices just having chats backwards and forwards. I mean, you know it's AI because occasionally they'll go, Okay, let's just dive into this. And "dive in" is a real giveaway for AI. Except I used to use that expression before AI came along, so I've had to...

Kate Stoermer
There are definitely some terms that will trigger the idea that this was AI-generated for sure.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we've talked about ChatGPT, we've talked about Claude, we've talked about NotebookLM, and we've talked about Perplexity. What does Gemini do?

Kate Stoermer
So I have not... So very early... Gosh, when Gemini first came out, I played around with it a little bit, and that's the extent of it. I've really focused most of it really on other things. So I can't give a current day analysis of what it's doing. So what are you using it for?

Heather Bayer
Exactly like you. I dabbled in it six months ago or so, and I couldn't tell you exactly what it does either. So maybe we'll withdraw that one from our list. But it's out there. Whatever Gemini does, we've both tried it, but it's not part of our core AI. What would you call it? The AI basket that we use. What else is in your basket?

Kate Stoermer
Yeah. So I use a Chrome extension called WebPilot. And so if you are not a Chrome extension user, it basically, you can just add it to the top of your web bar. I'm on my laptop and I've got three different screens in front of me most of the day. And so it's right up at my search bar, and if I have a web page itself pulled up, I can pull up WebPilot, and I can ask it a question to just query that specific web page, or I can take it to the next step and say... And through a specific perspective, I could say, Well, how might this be helpful for my estate property management business? And so it can not only summarize the contents of an article or a web page that you're on, But you can actually, at that level, just query it and quickly have a brainstorming buddy about, is this something that I really want to dig more into? So that is one that's in my toolbox that I use, fairly frequently. I mean, I think ChatGPT stays up all day, but I think that one is a convenient one for if I just want to grab some information from an article or a web page really quickly. And it's also the same thing if it's a really long web page. Maybe it's a Township page and they've got all kinds of stuff, I'm like, is short-term rentals mentioned on this page anywhere?

Heather Bayer
Oh, I love that. I love that. And it's interrogating the entire website, not just a single page?

Kate Stoermer
Yes. Yeah.

Heather Bayer
Okay. Some of these things are worthwhile knowing before you start getting into these, because I know there's some of the extensions and some of the software that's out there will do one thing, whereas something will do another thing. So it's really worth before you dive in to downloading every... What I'm trying to say is before you download every flavor of the day, to really explore whether this is for you, because I do that. It's just like I have something that comes along and I'm going, yes, I'll use that. I'll download it. I'll spend probably two hours on it to realize that it's not worth the time I just spent.

Kate Stoermer
Well, and so similarly, and this is one that actually probably comes up more often in working with business founders as well, especially property managers, they often say, I fell into this, right? And so they spend all this time in the field, figuring this out, picking a property management tool and implementing it and adding to it as their portfolio is growing. And they don't think as much about their website. And they know on some level this idea of SEO. There's some concept that they should know SEO. But they're growing. They're happy with growing and all this. And then along comes Kate, and she's like, well, you're not really popping up on the web. And if somebody is looking for the services you offer, we want to make sure that you're popping up, right? We want to make sure that your website, that you've probably paid somebody to put together for you. And so I often recommend using AI assistive rather than bringing in an SEO expert, which you absolutely can do. But a lot of times they're hesitant to go that route and to open their checkbook at that moment.

Kate Stoermer
So I'll recommend something.... Uber.... I've just lost the name Uber.... review [Ubersuggest]? I'll double check that. Or Semrush are two that I really like that can help with those technical things. I would call those AI-assisted programs. I mean, there's a component of it that is AI, and then there's other components that they've built this product for. And a lot of the AI we use is that way. Our dynamic pricing is the same way. They're using predictive AI that's being harnessed by a product that people are using. So these are similar kinds of things where... And a lot of the people that I work with, that is something that I wind up recommending is like, let's just do a little bit of a tune up. You don't have to do the whole thing, but it's helpful just to tweak it to understand it in order to get... I mean, most people are coming to me. They want to grow their portfolio. They're trying to bust through that. So that's an easy way to make sure you're showing up.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. And there's a tool out there for just about everything now. There are still things that are free, but mostly we will move to paid models for everything as we go forward. So people need to expect to be paying for these things rather than having them always for free.

Heather Bayer
So What do you recommend when somebody's thinking about, should I buy into this one or should I buy into that one? Because that really begins to just add on to the tech stack beyond where it needs to be.

Kate Stoermer
You know, stepping... Going back into the larger question you're asking is, at what point do we decide what to add to our tech stack? It's, get clear in what you're trying to achieve and make sure that the tool you're looking to add to the stack is actually going to do that. Anticipate a learning curve for everything, right? And then the other one is, so many products that we already use are adding chatbots, right? There's lots of chatbot options out there where you can get some simple back and forth, maybe with guests, or maybe you have a CRM that you're using. It's probably got AI assist in writing your emails, so get clear about the problem you're trying to solve. And before you go out and buy new tech, take another look at the tech that you have. I was just onboarding a new client the other day, and she's like, Yeah, I know I'm not using my Breezeway as well as as I could be, and you're already paying for it. And typically we get software because we're looking to solve one problem, right? And then it has capabilities well beyond that, that over time it's an iterative process. But don't just assume you have to go and add yet another thing to it. And then obviously, we want to make sure that it has the capability to solve that problem, that it integrates with the things we need it to integrate with, or that we can make integrate with something called middleware like Zapier. And then it really works with you and how you work, because there's nothing more frustrating than getting a new piece of tech, whatever it is, and then realizing that it's too clunky and mobile, and you never sit at your laptop. That's something really simple and very real. How many people I hear that from?

Heather Bayer
Yes, exactly. You made a great point there about checking to see what.... You've bought into something like Breezeway, which is a supremely powerful system. And are you just using text messaging? Or just go back and go talk to Koryn or somebody at Breezeway and say, okay, I've got this. Take 20 minutes, half an hour, and tell me whether I'm using it impactfully or not. And where else? What other features has it got that I just haven't explored yet? It's like a big chest of treasures that you may never have got to the bottom of yet. So I think that is such a good point. And the same goes for some of the PMSs that they do have functionality that you probably just aren't using. And going out and buying another piece of stand-alone tech to go on top of that is just such a waste.

Kate Stoermer
Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing, again, stepping back bigger picture, and this is what I do a lot of, is we can only do so much. It's not hard as a founder to just go out and play around in something like ChatGPT. But it's a whole other thing to go out and and think that you're going to - and ask me how I know - implement a new project management software, right? The time that you're going to spend to figure that out and start playing all the various pieces of your business in that to all of a sudden go, Okay, what I said I was going to do this quarter or this year was to get on sales calls more often or flush out my business development process and be more consistent on trying to build this. But I'm over here spending 15 hours a week monkeying around a project management software that I didn't know I needed. And yeah, it's probably a legitimate challenge that you're facing. But if we allow ourselves, our monkey brains, to get lured in because I saw a reel that said, Hey, this thing is going to solve all of your problems. Okay, hold me back. Because I want it to solve all of my problems. It's not going to. So that level of, as a founder particularly, we have to stay the course and we have to have a process for, how am I going to do this? So I personally, because I absolutely suffer from shiny syndrome. I'm going to go chase the next shiny thing. I instituted a rule for myself. If it's going to take me more than 2 hours or $200.

Heather Bayer
I love it.

Kate Stoermer
I know that's a small threshold, isn't it?

Heather Bayer
Yes.

Kate Stoermer
I cannot do it. It has to go on my list. And in my monthly - I have a whole process - in my monthly review I say, okay, am I keeping this on my list? Is this something I want to maybe eventually explore? Or was that shiny object syndrome?

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I heard this from somebody the other day in one of my mastermind groups, actually. They said that something new comes on their horizon. They allow it to sit for five days. Do not buy into anything on day one. You let it sit for five days. If you're still excited about it after that time and it's not going out of your mind, then maybe go back and explore it. But stop.... and I am a shiny object syndrome failure.

Kate Stoermer
Marketers do a really great job because they're talking about legitimate pain points. And part of our job as founders is to decide what pain point are we going to work on today? How am I going to get to my goal? And that's a lot of what we wind up doing. So how do you decide where you're going to put your time and what tech you're going to pay for? I think you have to start there.

Heather Bayer
You have to There has to be some discipline.

Heather Bayer
Look, Kate, I can't believe we're coming to the end of our time. And I wanted you to share a few more tips. And we talked about the... You mentioned reviews and what you can do with your reviews in AI? Can you share that?

Kate Stoermer
Oh, my gosh. Yes. So this, I think, is one of the best uses for AI. And that is we have lots of reviews that guests leave for us, and we can take our reviews across your portfolio, a selection of them across your portfolio, and we can feed those for a specific house and feed those into ChatGPT. And we can query that in all kinds of different ways. We can ask it to build out a guest avatar. We can ask it to tell us a little bit more about our target market, all that. But we can also query our competitor's reviews, right? And we can set... And maybe, especially if we're going into a different market, because I do a lot of investment analysis for investors in various markets. This is a way that I really get to know a market is, I look at all their reviews and do the same thing. And it's such a beautiful way to quickly aggregate all of that data. And if it's not my portfolio, I can also say, where are people coming from, especially if it's a new market or things like that. And I think it's really a fantastic way.

Kate Stoermer
And then you can even take that, keeping in mind, it's not the full picture, it's only... There's a bias to it's only the people who chose to leave reviews. But who's staying at my property? Who might my target market be? Are there missed opportunities here? Is there a particular home that is a problem or.... So it's just, again, it's really a way of being more efficient, but also leveraging those algorithms in those generative AI models to quickly analyze that and then allow us to query it and get really detailed information quickly. So that can inform a marketing plan, that can inform a strategic review of your business, all kinds of ways.

Heather Bayer
I've got a great example of that because a few years ago, I did a course, and I can't remember how this fed into it, but I was analyzing reviews for a very particular area and looking to see what it was that made people choose a particular property over another one. And of course, this was before ChatGPT, so I did this all manually. And what came out of this was it was in an area in Destin where people rent beach chairs and umbrellas. And they're very expensive to hire your beach chair and umbrella for a week. And what we found from all these reviews that the properties that offered a beach chair and umbrella as part of the rental, even though they were more expensive, so that price was built into the cost of the rental. But the actual fact that they supplied a beach chairs and the umbrella for a week of rental made those properties way more popular, because it was mentioned over and over again. And that's the beauty now of AI, is that you wouldn't have to do that research. You put in all these reviews and say, what are people commenting about favorably? What do they like about the property they're staying in? And no doubt if I did that, it would spit out, they like staying in these particular properties because of this additional amenity that's on offer.

Kate Stoermer
Yeah, absolutely. I'm not ashamed to say I know I did book a vacation home one time, specifically because they offered the chairs and the umbrella. Absolutely.

Heather Bayer
Another one is pets. And something else we found that the properties were more expensive, but they didn't charge a pet fee. We very much appreciated they didn't charge the pet fee. And you looked at the pricing, it's like, well, your pet fee is included in the rental. But it's that perception. It's the perception, which is one of the reasons why my company never charged a pet fee, because we had it right at the top of our website. No pet fee. But we were more expensive. Our nightly rate was higher because we included the pet fee into the overall charge. Same with cleaning. So you'd find those things out. If people say, Well, I love staying at this place because they didn't charge a cleaning fee. They didn't charge a pet fee. There were no additional charges. Well, no, because they were all in the price. But it's perception. But you can use AI to discover all that.

Kate Stoermer
Yeah, absolutely. It is an endless opportunity.

Heather Bayer
Any other tips that you've got?

Kate Stoermer
Well, I think we would be remiss not to point out the limitations, right? Don't give any sensitive or confidential information. Don't assume that it... Unless it's protected by a vendor that has those protections in place. I mean, I think that's a really important thing to remember in terms of using it. But otherwise, I think looking at where there are gaps in your knowledge can be really helpful in terms of even what questions do I... If I want to bring in a consultant or a marketer or a part-time CFO or something like, you can brainstorm with these models to help clarify the points that you need to be aware of as a business owner to be responsible in doing that. And you don't have to know all that, right? You can just brainstorm those things. And so I think that's another way that I think I see a lot of folks find it be helpful is just as a brainstorming partner.

Heather Bayer
Well, thank you so much for sharing so much. I think I've done way too much talking on this one, but I tend to do that when it's a topic that really fires me up. I particularly wanted to talk to you rather than... I thought, I'd like to go out and find somebody who just focuses just on AI, but so much better to find somebody who is immersed in the industry and is already consulting and helping other people to do it better and pick your brain. So this has been really, really great. How can people find out more about you, Kate?

Kate Stoermer
Sure. So I am pretty much everywhere as The CEO Host. So LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all of those things. And that's really the best way to find me.

Heather Bayer
Okay. Well, all of those things, all of that information, plus everything that we have mentioned today will be in the Show Notes, probably with a little bit more. And just to let you know that we have the transcript of this audio is on the Show Notes, but we also feed that transcript into ChatGPT and ask it to create things from it. So we use this. We use this for our social media. Just one more piece of software, we use something called Alphana. You just give it the transcript of the podcast and ask it to create 50 pieces of social media output. And it will do blog posts and LinkedIn posts and Facebook and everything. So I could go on with the....

Kate Stoermer
That's what makes it so fun, right? And I did want you to know, Heather, as well, by the time this goes out, I almost have it done. I did put most of the tools that I thought we might talk about into a download. So I'll make that available that you can put in the Show Notes.

Heather Bayer
Did we miss any tools out?

Kate Stoermer
Oh, we could just go on and on. I think we covered the big ones and maybe for somebody new, where to start. But for sure, I definitely have some other ideas and ways and some prompts that folks could use, especially if they're new.

Heather Bayer
Okay. Well, that will be in the Show Notes as well, you can download that.

Heather Bayer
Thank you, Kate. It's been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Kate Stoermer
This was fun.

Heather Bayer
Yes, it was. Bye.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Kate. My goodness, I know I talked way too much in that. Once I get onto a topic that really fires me up, I just have to keep talking about it. So I thought that conversation was super valuable. Kate shared so much and I really appreciated her coming along and giving me her perspective. So as I mentioned, everything's in the Show Notes, go over there and check out all the platforms we use.

Heather Bayer
We are working on a new course on AI and how we use AI really, really practically for our business. I'm not going to go into the more theoretical side of it, but I just want to share some real practical stuff just as Kate was talking about. So watch out for that. That'll be upcoming in the New Year, along with a number of other things that we're going to be talking about in the New Year.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much for joining me. It's always a pleasure being with you. So that's it for this week. I hope you really enjoyed that. I thought it was a really valuable conversation with Kate, but it's almost like a starter conversation, isn't it? We've got so much more to talk about in this area. So watch out for some new material that's coming out from us in the New Year. There'll be courses, there will be new podcasts, quite a few new podcasts to come. So watch out for that. We'll keep you informed. If you're not on our mailing list, then please go to vacationrentalformula.com or just send me an email at heather@vacationrentalformular.com and let me know what you're interested in, if you'd like to join our mailing list or receive our newsletter or whatever. And we'll get that sorted. So until next time. Bye-bye.

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.