Heather Bayer:

Welcome to the SSTIR Crazy 2025 Launch Podcast. I'm Heather Bayer and I'm joined today by my co-founder of the Vacation Rental Formula Business School, my son, and my business partner, Mike Bayer. Welcome, Mike. Always a pleasure to have this chance to have a discussion with you.

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Mike Bayer:

It's exciting to be back when we're talking about SSTIR Crazy. It's that time of year again. For those of you who remember, we did SSTIR Crazy around this time February last year in 2024 and it was a fun idea that has grown into what we have created for 2025, which is what we're going to talk about today in this episode. So hopefully you guys are excited too and make sure you listen in because we have some really amazing support for this event, including a huge grand prize. And we're going to talk about how you can get involved and how you can win this grand prize.

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Heather Bayer:

Let's just kick back a bit and let's, for those who have no idea what SSTIR Crazy is, maybe they didn't come along for any of the sessions in February of 2024, let's just go back to the beginning, very briefly, and just talk about how this all started. And it started, was it December 2023 or maybe January '24?

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And I think maybe it was towards the end of 2023 and it was after the Orlando VRMA Conference., And Justin Ford posted on LinkedIn and he was saying that it was a little disturbing to him and disappointing, maybe that's a better word, to be at VRMA and see the packed education sessions on all those sexy topics like marketing and guest experience, and I was going to say revenue management, perhaps isn't that much of a sexy topic, but it seems to really attract the audiences.

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And on the other hand, that there were sessions on sustainability, there were sessions on insurance, there were sessions on safety, and they were nowhere near as busy. They certainly didn't get the standing room only status. And we had this idea, coming from that post from Justin, to talk about these, what we consider to be the pillars of our business, the things that if we didn't have in place, our businesses just wouldn't survive. And those things are safety, they're trust, they're responsibility, they're insurance, they're regulations, and to create our own event that was just around those topics and do it online and over a five week period, which we did in February of 2024.

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Just give a quick outline, Mike, of how that panned out, how that five weeks went.

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Mike Bayer:

Yeah, I think what we were trying to achieve was to get across as much knowledge as we could on these five key topics through different mediums. Because that's something we do here at the Vacation Rental Formula Business School, is we're very much aware that with any kind of learning, you have to provide content in different formats.

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So there are people who like to read, there are people who like to listen, there's people who like to watch. And that's how we came up with the way we're delivering this content. We have blog posts, we have a live panel, where you can actually attend in person and ask a live Q&A questions to industry experts on these five topics. And then we also had a dedicated podcast episode to the topic with an expert from the industry; it seemed to be a really good format. 

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We had good feedback last year, but it was very much something we put together at the last minute; it was just a great idea. It was something that both Heather and I felt very passionately about. It really aligns well with our mission and our core values at the Vacation Rental Formula Business School. When we were looking at 2025, what we had to figure out is that how do we get people to pay attention? So putting out content is one thing, but how do we engage people? How do we make it exciting? How do we catch people's attention so they'll actually take this knowledge? And then, with these topics that people maybe aren't paying too much attention to, they'll actually take action and go and perform some of these basic things that we're asking people to do to not only secure their business, but also show their stakeholders, their guests, their owners, their community and their staff members, that they've really invested in what they do. And this is where our ideas have come from for what we're going to do in 2025.

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Heather Bayer:

And, yeah, let's just take a step back. Let's go back to why we called it SSTIR Crazy.

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Mike Bayer:

Yes. So this time of year, and I don't mean to leave out our winter vacation destinations, because obviously you guys are still very busy in the Colorados, anywhere where you have the snow and the skiing and that is your bread and butter. So we're not forgetting you guys. But typically for the majority of our audience, this time of year is the tumbleweed season.

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It's between Christmas and New Year, not quite in March break, and we're certainly not into the crazy booking season for the summer just yet. We looked at this February month as being one of those months where you just go a bit nuts. We're just waiting for things to get going, and you go SSTIR Crazy. And this is how, with these key topics, Safety, Sustainability, Trust, Insurance Regulations, SSTIR, that's how we came up with SSTIR Crazy Month.

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah, that really worked well, even with the two Ss and the fact that we're not running it this year in that order of safety sustainability trust, because we're starting with trust, but we'll come back to that in a bit, and the reason for that. But that's why we called it SSTIR Crazy Month. It definitely stuck, and we want this to be something that happens every single year. And it's consistent, and people are expecting it, and looking forward to engaging with it. As Mike just said, we wanted to do it somewhat differently this year, so that it became more engaging. So what we did was create a fictional property management company.

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I know from my 20 years as a property manager, that's every property manager deals with issues, and they deal with issues of trust. They deal with issues of safety. Things happen. People get hurt. Something gets damaged. We deal with issues of insurance. We deal with regulations. We deal with sustainability, and we do it over a long period of time. 

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In SSTIR Crazy Month 2025, we are compacting all these things that might happen over a longer period of time with a property management company into a five week period. We've created Stay Wise Rentals, which is a family-run property management company. It's at the crossroads of its growth cycle. They've grown really quickly, but they're now facing all sorts of issues. They're facing scaling issues. Increased competition and high guest expectations. Everybody, at this stage or at some stage, of growth faces these things. And over the course of the five weeks of SSTIR Crazy Month, Stay Wise faces different challenges, and a challenge each week in a different area.

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For example, In the Trust Week, guests are questioning the professionalism of this company, because they've got a bit of a sketchy website, as somebody has said on social media. In Safety Week, gaps are being revealed in their procedures. In Insurance Week, they have what we call the pool party disaster, which raises all sorts of questions about their gaps in insurance coverage. In Sustainability Week, we talk about an issue that Stay Wise is facing because of rising costs and also, eco-conscious competition. And this is going to be an interesting one, because this is happening. Companies are becoming more eco-conscious and guests are actually looking for this in companies. We're going to be dealing with how Stay Wise copes with that. And then with regulations, they're facing some compliance issues.

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That is the basic narrative that is running through the entire five weeks, and we hope by the end of five weeks you'll really understand where Stay Wise has come from, where it's going and you'll be able to have a ringside seat to all the expert advice that Sarah and Mike, who are siblings who own Stay Wise Rentals, you'll have that ringside seat to all the advice and recommendations that they're being given.

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Mike Bayer:

And I think that one of the really important parts for this event for this year is we're wanting to reach a wider audience. Obviously we want to get this information out to as many people as possible. But one of the things that we're really encouraging you to do is if you're a member of staff or if you're a principal of a short-term rental or vacation rental property management company, we want you to get your team, your staff, you and your work colleagues involved in this. We want you guys to be having conversations about this in your weekly staff meetings. We want you to be looking at the content that we're sharing over the course of these five weeks and engaging with the people around you to find out, Are we good? Are we doing these things? Are we ensuring that we are taking care of not only our guests, our owners, and our community, but also the members of our team? 

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Now, we're going to give a little bit of an extra incentive. We mentioned that we have a big grand prize coming up, and we're going to talk about that shortly. But we're also going to be giving prizes out for teams who are getting involved. So when we talk about how we're going to be scoring, each individual who's getting involved and the tasks we're asking them to do. There is going to be a big shout out and a big promotion and a big prize for the top team who are performing the most tasks and getting the most involved.

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And we're going to talk about that a little bit in a moment, but all we ask you to do through the course of this entire event is to take notes. We're going to have a full workbook, everybody who registers is going to have a workbook, and registration is free by the way. We keep forgetting to mention that. This is free. We put this on for everybody because this is so important. And the reason that this content is so important is it's vital for the industry as a whole, because if the more companies who are taking the time to pay attention to their safety issues, their sustainability issues, following regulations. All of these things come together to help position you for when your community may be looking to take regulatory action and impose legislation against short-term rentals. 

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If you can get out in front of the issues that are potentially going to happen in your vacation destination, then you are going to be in a better position when you can say, we have already done all these things. 

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So earlier on, when I mentioned getting your staff involved, if you have an association get everybody in your association involved. This is how we come together as an industry to protect ourselves, to protect our livelihoods, by doing the right thing. So that's why this is so important and I really strongly encourage you to share as much as you can about this in LinkedIn posts, with conversations you're having with people, with your associations, and just get everybody involved, because the more people involved in this the better it is for us as a whole industry

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Heather Bayer:

And you're going to be hearing about this over the next few weeks as this takes off, because I mentioned that Sarah and Mike Chen, who are the owners of Stay Wise, are going to be counseled and coached by experts in the week. And our experts, and I'll share who our experts are, the first one for trust is Chris Maughan.

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If you're on LinkedIn and you follow Chris, you'll know that life is dedicated to creating trust within his business. I've known Chris for a long time. He runs one of the biggest property management companies in Cannes in France and his company AES Events provides accommodation to some of the largest companies in the world when they come into Cannes for different types of events.

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For example, he just posted recently that Netflix have just renewed on a three year contract with AES Events for them to provide accommodation for every time Netflix comes in to maybe the Cannes Film Festival, or other major events. The list of companies that he deals with and handles rentals for, is just monumental.

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And he has built his business around trust. If I have any question about how I want to portray our company, to have it seen as trustworthy, Chris is the person I would go to. Chris is also the founder of I-PRAC, which is the first trust certification for property management businesses and hosts. So you go through the trust certification process with I-PRAC and then you have a badge that you can put on your site and it helps people to trust that website, and for direct booking websites that is quite amazing.

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And I-PRAC is sponsoring the entire trust week. So we are looking forward to hearing from Chris as he coaches Sarah and Mike through their trust issues. And this will be through podcasts that I've done with Chris. We have a live webinar where we are going to be talking about how you can create the trust within your website design. And this is really important, because for anybody who's doing direct booking, website design is just primary. So I'm looking forward to that. And then there will be blog posts, there will be LinkedIn posts, and question and answer sessions. So I'm looking forward to that one. 

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Do you want to talk about the safety week, Mike?

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Mike Bayer:

Yeah. So safety, we've partnered with Justin Ford, who is the pinnacle of safety education in our short-term rental industry. And we have a very close relationship with Justin. I've seen him speak many times. And his backstory and the reason why he got into this is so compelling because he has, as in, it has affected him where he was potentially responsible for this very serious incident that happened at a property that he was managing. So his backstory is very obvious as to why he's so passionate about what he does. And I think that quite often it's too easy to turn off and not pay attention to the safety message. We hear it, not just in our industry, we hear all around us about being safe and I hear it quite often of some people saying well, we should just wrap ourselves in bubble-wrap and it's that's not what we're talking about here. There are many properties and many businesses across North America who are not even providing the bare bones basics as required by law And we're seeing this in the multitude of lawsuits and newspaper articles of fatalities, drownings, which are all preventable with some very basic safety equipment, or thought when it comes to safety. 

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So during safety week, again, similar content delivery, we're going to have several blog posts. We're also going to have a fantastic safety panel, where we're going to be talking about How do we do things with safety in design? How do we design our properties to be safety conscious or safety aware? 

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So we've got some wonderful guests on the safety panel and that's going to be led by Justin Ford and myself, so you should definitely join us for that, and then Justin will be giving us a fantastic discussion on the podcast about safety and some of the key things that you can do within your business

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah, that's going to be really interesting. And that leads in really to insurance week, where, as I mentioned before, the situation that's facing Stay Wise Rentals in Insurance Week is an unauthorized pool party where I think we've all experienced this type of issue, where you get a call out of the blue from somebody who says there's way more people at this property than there should be. But what happened with this pool party was a situation that caused thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage. So in Insurance Week, Nick Massey from Proper Insurance will be discussing what happened, what Sarah, Mike and Stay Wise Rentals could have done differently, and also what they can do better going forward.

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And we have a podcast interview once again with Nick and then a panel, where we talk about how you can disaster-proof your business, which is so relevant at this moment as we're recording this we are seeing what's happening in California. Insurance is a big issue right now, so Nick is going to be talking in the panel about lessons in insurance readiness. And we're going to have a property manager who has experienced some insurance issues. 

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So it's going to be very relevant to everybody to come along and listen to this panel. We are very grateful to Proper Insurance for sponsoring Insurance Week, and I'm going to really enjoy that one.

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I think I've mentioned many times before that my company was sued for a slip and fall accident a number of years ago before I sold it, and that was really difficult to cope with. But we were very well insured. And I was so thankful that when we got to the end of that, and it was all settled, that the insurance company just took care of everything. And that's what you need to have happen. That's insurance week. 

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Mike Bayer:

Just before we move on there, I just wanted to say that I got the opportunity to see Nick speak on stage at the Vermont conference. Sometimes it's too easy to think, almost all of us have insurance and you'll probably listen to this podcast going, I already have insurance. I'm not really interested in that week, I can skip that one. Don't do it. There are too many people who have insurance who don't really truly understand their policy and don't truly understand whether or not the insurance company actually understands what you do. Because what happens is when there is an incident at your property, or with your business, that's when the insurance company actually pays attention and really dig deep into what you do and how you do your operations. And each individual step is torn apart by the insurance company. Now unless you're insured by somebody who specifically insures short-term rental or vacation rental business operators and their properties, nobody has a really good idea of what we do in our business and they will look for every opportunity to not pay out. And Nick's knowledge of t his industry is just unparalleled, and I think it's worth really taking a good listen to his sessions and all the content in Insurance Week, because you will learn there are holes in your policy you didn't realize you even had, and you'll be really thanking yourself for taking that time. Please don't put off Insurance Week, it's it is one of the best weeks I think of this whole event.

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Heather Bayer:

And then we come to Regulations Week, and I'm so pleased to bring Dana Lubner into the coaching post for this week. She's the Director of Community Development at Rent Responsibly. And she kicked off her journey in the industry and property management and that inspired her, that her passion for short-term rental advocacy and civic engagement.

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When I interviewed her for the podcast she was wearing a little gold broach, which is a little seat. And that is the emblem really of Rent Responsibly, and the aim of 'getting a seat at the table' and taking your seat with you with this little emblem.

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So she talks about that in our podcast and in that podcast, we're talking about how to manage compliance when regulations come, and it can be really overwhelming. And she explains so well how to take it calmly, to take it step by step, and be a compliant organization, while also maintaining and growing connections with communities.

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And in the panel for the week that Dana's on I'll be moderating that, Dana's leading it, and we'll be talking about success stories from different associations, because it's so important that everybody gets involved with their local advocacy association. And as Mike just talked about going to Vermont, we went. It was a Vermont Short-term Rental Association Conference and I loved it. Didn't you, Mike? Just seeing all those people come together and they came together because they were members of this Association. It wasn't just an ad hoc conference, it was a bringing together of people in Vermont, in that area, to talk about the issues that are very particular to them and their location.

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Mike Bayer:

One of the things I particularly loved about, that's the first time I've been to a very local event. And one of the things I really liked is they had some of the vendors there were local artisans, where you can actually furnish your property with these beautiful handmade blankets. Or, with honey. And these are the kinds of things, these are the connections that you make with your community when you're part of these associations. You get to network with other business professionals who aren't necessarily accommodation providers, but they have a vested interest in the tourist industry in your destination. And that's how you build relationships, and that's how you begin to insert your business into your community. So you have support when regulations inevitably hit the table of the your local council or your local municipality, and people will be less inclined to arbitrarily throw down very draconian regulations or legislation without consultation. That's what's been happening in a lot of jurisdictions is there has been enough noise made by the lobbyists from the hotel industry that are not even reaching out to find out what the short-term rental industry is all about, how it operates, and how so well integrated it is into the community. Heather and I attended the CanStays Rental Alliance Conference in Banff back in April and one of the legislators who is there talking to the audience, talking about how you become involved. Typically it's very hard to get noticed at the federal level unless you have a lot of money behind you like Airbnb or Expedia or bigger companies. Where you have the biggest impact on your business is getting involved at the local level. And I'm talking in your city, in your region, and even at the state level, as high as you can go. The one single quote, and we've mentioned this on the podcast before, is if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. I'm going to say that again. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. You'll wake up one day, if you're not paying attention, and then all of a sudden, just as Sarah and Mike are going to experience as Stay Wise Rentals, suddenly out of the blue, you're going to be slapped with a whole bunch of new regulations, with a compliance order, and you didn't even know they were coming. So this is why this week's a really good one to pay attention to, because you need to be getting involved in your local area and find out what's going on.

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Heather Bayer:

And one of the blog posts for this week is called, It Won't Happen Here, is not a compliance strategy. I'm down here in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and this is a massive vacation rental community and I have spoken to people who have said No, there won't be any regulations here because we live, eat and breathe vacation rentals. It's happening. It's actually happening in places where they never expected legislation to come upon them.... 

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Mike Bayer:

Like the Outer Banks. 

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Heather Bayer:

The Outer Banks.

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Mike Bayer:

Yeah, so that's been a big one, a massive tourist destination where people weren't paying attention. And all of a sudden the small number of local residents who actually go and attend council meetings, or meetings of their local government, and the businesses weren't there. And again, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah, we're seeing it happen in Smoky Mountains areas as well. Once again, massive tourism area. But there's nothing to stop legislation coming in.

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Mike Bayer:

I just want to give one little tidbit here. And this was another thing I learned from Vermont. This is why you have to go to conferences, people. Heather and I have been in this business for over 20 years and still you go and learn from other people; it's so important. And this was just the most fabulous AI hack. If you're familiar with ChatGPT and the power of ChatGPT, you can download all the minutes from your local council meetings and load them into ChatGPT and ask the question, Is there the possibility of regulations or legislation in short-term rentals in my area based on these minutes? And in a few seconds it will tell you whether or not there is, or there isn't, and we'll even be able to highlight for you, I'm going to give a little bit of a teaser here. You need to listen into the podcast over the next few weeks as we get into March, because we'll be talking about AI and a new practical AI course for the vacation rental market

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah I remember that happening. You listening or us listening to that presentation where we got that tip. And, yeah, I think you just cheered, because it was just so simple and yet so impactful. Yeah. There's a lot more of that to come on AI. But certainly, do not miss Regulations Week, because, as we say, it won't happen here is not a compliance strategy. So it could impact you. It will impact everybody at some point. 

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Finally, the final week is on Sustainability, and my guest and our coach and mentor for that week is Bob Garner, a great friend. Bob has been passionate about environmentalism and creating eco-friendly and sustainable vacation rentals for years. And there's a lot of statistics coming out now, Mike, which talk about, particularly Gen Z, they are the most eco-conscious generation and they're coming up fast. And they are specifically looking for properties and for companies that are showing that they are paying attention to sustainability, because these guests are interested in it and they want to go to places that are green.

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The podcast that week, we've called it From Energy Hog to Eco Hero. It's a great discussion with Bob Garner about how to save money and also be profitable. And then this goes into the panel as well, where we talk about how sustainability can actually pay you in the different things that you can do to create a sustainable environment, and it's not costly. And this is what Bob talks about entirely through this week. It doesn't have to cost you, it actually saves you money and can make you money. 

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That was an introduction to all our experts and I want to move into how this actually works, Mike. I know you've been working super hard on creating something that's going to be really engaging, getting people to take part, and I'd like to go back to what you said earlier about teams.

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So this is not just about the principle of a company registering to take part in this program. And as I say that, you don't have to register. You can read the blog posts, you can listen to the podcast, you can come along to the the webinars and the live events, you don't have to register. But if you want to take part and do the activities and be a part of the competitive side, then get your entire team to register, make it a competition amongst your team. Mike said earlier, get people together week by week to have the discussion. You can have discussion on week one on Trust and your website, and get everybody involved. And then into safety, and insurance, and regulations, and sustainability. At the end of this five weeks, your team can come out as a much better educated group, but also, it will build cohesiveness within your team. So it's just creating this vibrant environment that we talk about a lot within our Vacation Rental Formula Business School.

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Mike Bayer:

So the best way to, to get involved and to participate in this is to go to vacationrentalformula.com/sstir, vacationrentalformula.com/sstir, and you can register. Now it's free to register, it doesn't cost you a penny. And within the next week or so, we will be..., I say within the next week or so...... Before the event starts, we will be giving you access to our event app. We're using Eventify for this event where you'll be able to network and communicate with other people who are attending, or who are registered.

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You'll also be able to connect with our sponsors and our exhibitors. But most importantly, we'll be competing in our weekly challenges that we will be issuing, where you'll be able to earn points for different tasks. Now the benefit to this is not only are you going to be showing the main benefit is you're going to be doing these things. You're going to be doing things that are very beneficial to you and your organization. We're going to engineer the tasks, so not only is it going to benefit you, but you will also be publishing certain items on your social media platforms, which will be showing your audience that you are taking things like safety and insurance and regulations and all these things seriously, which is again going to be engaging with your own audience. And lastly, the more things that you do will you points to win our potential grand prize. And we're very excited to be supported this year by VRNation, who have agreed to provide no less than two VIP tickets to this year's VRNation Conference, which is in Austin, Texas April 27th and 28th of 2025. Now we're working on sweetening the deal on a few other things that will yet to be announced. But VRNation have committed to providing two VIP tickets, and I believe these are $800 a ticket. Now what does that mean? What does it mean to have a VIP ticket? First of all, you are going to be treated at the event like a VIP. You'll have front row seating for all of the sessions that you wish to attend. You're going to be having the opportunity to meet and greet and spend some time in an exclusive session with their keynote speaker Steve Sims. 

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Now I've seen Steve speak before, he is a very famous. I don't want to use the word 'fixer', but he's somebody who can just make things happen. He wrote a book called Blue Fishing: The Art of Making Things Happen. Now, this isn't some kind of pseudo airy fairy, you know, I'm going to wish the powers of intention, which I actually do believe in, by the way. But he has this ability to network with the rich and famous and to basically provide anything that they may need, not what they might need, but any adventure they want to do. 

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So he's been approached in the past to have a world class dinner at the foot of Michelangelo's David, in the Louvre, which he arranged. He can arrange things that no other person can arrange and through his keynote and through his being a part of VRNation, he's going to be educating you on how you can connect with your audience, and how you can build these relationships that will allow you to provide the most fantastic and incredible experience for your guests, and even to build your VIP clientele if that's something you're interested in.

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So you'll have a private it's called The Bourbon and Brainstorm, because Steve does love his bourbon. And you'll have the opportunity to have a very intimate chat with him. You'll have obviously VIP lanyard and badge and exclusive goodie bag, which is just getting filled with more and more things each and every week, as we get closer to the VRNation event to be held in Austin, Texas. So we are thrilled and we wish to thank the team at VRNation for committing to providing that, and we're going to be talking a lot about that conference that Heather and I will both be attending. And we look forward to celebrating with the grand prize winners when we see them in Austin at the end of April.

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Heather Bayer:

And just to clarify that VIP registration, if you go to the VRNation website is $995 per ticket. So this prize is at the very least just under $2,000 in value.

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Mike Bayer:

Yeah, so we're very thrilled about that. And as I said, we are trying to sweeten the deal with a few more things we can't talk about just yet, but we hope to make that grand prize a little bit bigger. We did mention that if you're registering and you're putting your company name onto your registration, we're going to know and be able to calculate the top scoring teams, and this is why we want you to get your teams and your staff involved because we are going to highlight the top performers and ensure that we are promoting you guys for getting involved. We are also working on having weekly prizes too. So if you have the opportunity, let's say you only have the bandwidth to be able to focus on one week. If you want to really just knock it out of the park for one week's content, let's say safety, you can be a top prize winner for a prize for each specific week as well. So this is such a unique opportunity to turn an online event, which can quite typically be, I'll just log in here and there, we hope to be one of the most engaging, interactive online experiences you've had as part of the vacation rental industry.

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Heather Bayer:

Yeah, really excited about it because it is really going to be interactive. We've got mystery clues. We'll have some live polls. We'll be asking you questions on how you think that Stay Wise should go forward and what they should have done. So we want everybody to become really involved. It's not a matter of just sitting back with a cup of coffee and reading a blog post, although you can actually do that, but we want that engagement. We want to get to know you as a registrant or attendee at this event, and we'll be cheering you on through all the challenges that we're going to be facing you with over those five weeks.

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Mike Bayer:

Before we wrap up we do have to give thanks to the sponsors who have currently signed on. So this episode is airing on January the 15th. Next week we will be welcoming our top sponsor who've agreed to sponsor the entire event. And that's Guesty. We are absolutely thrilled that Guesty has signed on to be the top sponsor for this year's event. You're going to be hearing through the podcast especially, more about Guesty. We've had a long conversation with their team, just a wonderful team of people there, who genuinely, really genuinely care about their customers. It was wonderful to hear from C Level and and the customer experience team of how they help every single step of the experience with using the Guesty platform. And we're going to be talking about that in little snippets all the way through this event. And also how Guesty is helping to support Stay Wise Rentals and Sarah and Mike through some of the challenges that they're having.

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On top of that we should also wish to thank sponsor Chris Maughan and I-PRAC, who are sponsoring Trust Week. We wish to sponsor thank you the team from Proper Insurance who are supporting Insurance Week. And we also have some event sponsors as we go through. We'd like to thank Breezeway for helping us out with one or two events in Safety Week, as well as ICND who are getting involved as well. So that's where we are right now. We know that we will have a lot more to come as we go through these last few days leading up to our launch on January 27th, which is when we start Trust Week. But if you follow us on social media, if you register, which is the most important thing, make sure you register at vacationrentalformula.com/sstir And then also make sure to follow us on Facebook Instagram and LinkedIn, and you can find us at Vacation Rental Formula.

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Heather Bayer:

This is more than just an event, it's a real chance for you to gain industry insights, to connect with these experts, because there will be Q&A sessions where you can connect directly with them and to improve your business practices. If you get your team involved, we want to hear what your team is doing and what changes are being made in your company through going through this event and learning from what Stay Wise is experiencing and how they're making changes as a result.

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And of course there's opportunities for networking and those real world applications of the lessons that you're learning. Team benefits, I think I just said team benefits. I think I keep saying that, Mike, because I love that idea of complete teams getting involved and just having fun through this month of February, which can be, as you said, not for all companies, but for many companies, it's one of the quietest months of the year. And this is a great opportunity to get everybody involved in something, learning something, and taking on board new things that they can take into the much busier months.

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Mike Bayer:

Yeah, I think this is a great opportunity. Get registered and you'll be hearing from us both through email and through the app. Once we have everybody registered on the app we look forward to connecting with you and finding out how you are becoming successful with all these topics that we're covering during SSTIR Crazy Month 2025.

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Heather Bayer: It's going to be fun.

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