Bridging the Gap Between the STR World and Vacation Rentals with Stacey St. John

Alex Husner: 1:34

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex

Annie Holcombe:

and I'm Annie

Stacey St. John:

and I'm Stacey.

Alex Husner:

Yay, the one and only Stacy St. John on the podcast today. Ladies and gentlemen, she is a legend within short term rentals and has become a dear friend of mine and Annie's over the past year. So excited to have you here, Stacey.

Stacey St. John: 1:57

Oh my gosh, it is so fun to be here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a girl power Friday. Yeah, and I don't know.

Annie Holcombe: 2:04

I think I got to meet you in person finally at VRMA and that was really great. It was like crash your breakfast, and I think I told you that you are officially part of what we had dubbed, with Julie, the blonde mafia. So we've been bringing in blondes from all over the place to have our little power group and that's right Really glad to finally have you on the show to show everybody off to you.

Stacey St. John: 2:25

I so appreciate being a part of the blonde mafia, and if anybody knew the real color of my hair we don't say we say that we're the real women.

Alex Husner: 2:39

We don't say that we're the real blondes of vacation.

Annie Holcombe: 2:45

Well, stacy, it's a super treat to finally have you, and it's been months in the making, and so I think a lot of people who we know know you, but I don't know that our audience knows you, so why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your journey into short term rentals?

Stacey St. John: 2:59

Yeah, no, absolutely happy to do so. So I would say I'm actually relatively new to the short term rental space. I was investing in long term real estate and when COVID hit, my husband and I decided that we were no longer comfortable purchasing another long term rental with all the eviction moratoriums popping up. So if anybody's familiar with long term real estate investing, you know, during COVID times there were unfortunately, moratoriums put out there, so if someone didn't pay their rent as a landlord you had no recourse. And so we were actually getting finished flipping a home and we had intended on using the profits to go buy another long term rental for our portfolio and we decided, hey, let's think about buying a short term rental. And so I'll give you the very condensed version of the story. But we landed in Myrtle Beach. So after a lot of research and learning and education, we selected Myrtle Beach as our first market, and currently we own nine short term rentals in Myrtle Beach. I've now expanded into Ohio, which is where I live, so we have one short term rental here. I also am a licensed property manager in the state of South Carolina, so I have a boutique property management firm called Cozy Getaways and I do co-hosting as well, and I have a Facebook group for women in the short term rental space and do coaching and mentoring. And I tell you what it's a pretty fun life I live.

Annie Holcombe: 4:45

I should say so it's a lot A busy life, for sure. A busy life yeah.

Alex Husner: 4:51

But before you got into short term rentals, you had a big job and you've done many other things in your career before you got into this. But tell us a little bit about that and how that led to you making the change to do this full time.

Stacey St. John: 5:04

Yeah, so prior to leaving my leaving my W2, I was working for a global consulting firm. I led our sales and account management teams and I served on the leadership team and you know that experience. I would not trade for the world because I learned so much about leadership, about managing people, about dealing with issues beyond my control. I learned so many wonderful things that now I get to implement into my own business today. I had extensive training through the EOS operating model, which, if anybody's served the boat traction or anything like that really, really fabulous system for entrepreneurs. And again, I was able to learn that in the corporate world because I served on the leadership team for a consulting firm. But I got to absorb all that information and I utilize that on a daily basis today.

Annie Holcombe: 6:02

Yeah, I can't pass up that corporate training and being able to take it into your private world with you. So I came to know you, to know you, I think more stalking you at this point. Through your Facebook page through your Facebook page. Julie George introduced us to your Facebook page a while back and it was during COVID because I was hosting the clubhouses and she said you've got to meet Stacy, you've got to talk to Stacy, you've got to follow Stacy, and so she talked about you all the time and I got to really kind of follow your journey through that and what you've done in a small like you said, you're relatively new, but in a short amount of time. I mean you're like a rocket ship within our business. Thank you, you know I it.

Stacey St. John: 6:45

It is very humbling to hear you say that, and what I just think about is, when you have a mission to do good and help other people, it comes back to you full circle, and so I feel so incredibly grateful and blessed and it gives me goosebumps just talking about it, because I really never set out honestly to do any of this. But you know, I didn't have an intention of doing it, but it all just kind of happened very organically and I feel like if we can just lock arms and help one another, wouldn't the world be a better place? Oh, you just spoke to my heart?

Alex Husner: 7:22

Yeah, absolutely, and I think there's so much information and just a quest for information within our industry, for from people that have gotten into it within more recent years, and I think the female side of it is also very interesting, because people are realizing that they can build their own businesses and they can be entrepreneurs and they can get involved in these things. That gives them freedom that, you know, many of us were brought up just always with the understanding that you had to work for a company and that you actually, you know, these days you can work for yourself. There's a lot of different ways to do that, but there's still. It's a complex business and I think to be able to navigate those waters successfully, you need to be able to lean on people that have done it before you, and I see that very much within our community, and it's a great thing. We're very much a sharing community that wants to help people, and that's certainly what you've built as well. But now you've got your Facebook page. It's not just a Facebook page Like. You've got a lot of followers. How many do you?

Stacey St. John: 8:18

have now. What do you have to do today? I just checked earlier this morning and we're at, I think, 49,700 women who eat, sleep, breathe and talk short term rentals every day. That's amazing.

Annie Holcombe: 8:29

That's incredible.

Alex Husner: 8:30

Have you done like a survey of your audience for like how many properties that they manage, or any statistics on your audience?

Stacey St. John: 8:38

You know I really haven't. So I do have some membership questions that folks fill out when they enter the group and the first membership question is how long have you been in short term rentals? And, quite candidly, a good portion of my audience is fairly new, so they're brand spanking new. Now obviously I have some very seasoned veterans as well, but I think that's also some of the beauty of the community is that we have complete rookies mixed with folks who are growing their short term rental portfolio and businesses along with seasoned pros, and they all have a heart for helping one another. And again, like I think that is such a beautiful thing, when I see women helping other women, it literally it's like somebody pinched me, like it is the best feeling in the world.

Annie Holcombe: 9:39

It's so great. We're getting ready for Amy Hynos, the Ironman, tell Her the Kids and Rental Women's Summit and it'll be her third one. And I didn't get to go to the first one, but I went to the second one and it was like a spiritual experience for Alex and I because we had just started the podcast. I was like literally like our first like event that we were podcasters. But we have found that to be so true within this business that, regardless of whether somebody has won or they have thousands, the women in the industry want to help each other out. It is a sisterhood. It's just this. It's just great. You get a great warm hug whenever you go to any event and I think what's really great about what you're doing is that there's a lot of people that got into the business, say on the other side of COVID, pre-covid, and they didn't have anywhere to go for this information, and COVID kind of forced people to get online and start sharing. The clubhouses really really opened up Like for me and Alex opened up conversations across the world. That's how we met Julie, george and a lot of the other people in other areas of the country and started like really sharing learnings and knowledge and camaraderie, and so I think what you've done is you've been able to kind of bridge the gap that had been there previous, where, just if you were new, you just kind of had to walk into a room and just hope that you were gonna be able to find the light switch. So you know, I don't know if that was just something that organically happened, or when you started it, did you have a plan of how you were gonna implement that portion and then grow with your business?

Stacey St. John: 11:04

Well, I'll tell you the story of how my Facebook group actually began, and it's going to not be very exciting, like no master plan okay. But I'm a licensed real estate agent in Ohio and this was probably about six months into my investing journey and by this time I had three short-term rentals in Myrtle Beach and a fellow real estate agent from Texas reached out to me because he knew I was buying property at the beach and he was serving clients in Galveston, texas, lived in the Austin area, and he was like Stacey, my clients are asking me about how to navigate a vacation rental and navigate managing a short-term rental, and I don't know what to tell them. Can you put together just some basic information for me? And I was like sure, yeah, no problem, I'll be happy to do that. So I started kind of jotting down a list of okay, it would be important for them to know ABC, x, y and Z. And I thought, now that I've been in it, it's kind of hard to remember what it was like when I knew nothing. So I popped into another Facebook group for women in real estate so just women real estate investors and just asked a question hey, if you were buying a property at the beach, what types of things would you want to know? And the floodgates opened. There were like 350 comments and somebody said you should start a Facebook group about that, oh wow, just hit you.

Annie Holcombe: 12:40

The signs were there. The signs were there exactly yeah.

Stacey St. John: 12:43

So I said, yeah, I could totally do that. So I opened a Facebook group and from the start though, annie, to really answer your question I wanted to make my Facebook group different, because there are so many Facebook groups out there where people are so nasty and hateful to one another Like it makes you feel icky to be there. And I thought, if I'm gonna have people coming together, I want them to feel good when they're inside of this group. I want them to feel encouraged and empowered, and so that's something that I did set out from the very beginning when I launched that group that I wanted people to feel like they had a support system around them and they were in a non-judgment zone and they could ask any question and feel okay about it. And, quite candidly, I share with people all the time If you see behavior that does not align with that approach, report it to me and I kick people out of the group.

Annie Holcombe: 13:49

A lot yeah, oh yeah, good good.

Alex Husner: 13:52

Well, I think that's smart. I mean that creates a community and it creates something where everybody feels like it is a safe place to ask questions, and we talk about this all the time, and I spend more time on LinkedIn than I do on Facebook these days, because Facebook is really negative in most cases. So or just things that you're just not interested in seeing. So if you're gonna bring people there, you gotta bring them there for a reason and a purpose that they're actually learning something. So I'm curious, as you started building this portfolio, you started with a few units here in Myrtle Beach and then you've got in the other areas. But tell me about the Myrtle Beach properties. This is in my backyard, so I'm interested to hear what that experience has been like. This is probably one of the most competitive markets in the United States. That has probably one of the most demand for it as well. But with a lot of demand comes a lot of very operationally strong and very marketing strong companies that you're competing with. So what has that been like as you've built the portfolio here?

Stacey St. John: 14:50

It's been such a fun experience I will share with you. When I started buying in Myrtle Beach, I had a very specific budget that I wanted to utilize for my purchase and I want it to be on the ocean. And so I did a ton of due diligence and research and I had it whittled down to a few markets and my top two markets were Dustin and Myrtle Beach. And for my budget, my view if I bought in Dustin would be to a pond. You know I'd be overlooking a pond or maybe a small lake if I were lucky. But in Myrtle Beach I could actually be on the ocean. That is why I ultimately selected Myrtle Beach, because I wanted to be on the ocean. The other thing about buying in Myrtle Beach and building my portfolio there is I love to buy ugly properties and rehab them, and there were lots of options of ugly properties.

Alex Husner: 15:53

Are you saying Myrtle Beach is ugly? You're going to hurt my feelings. I am not. There are properties that are definitely older. Product for sure, yeah.

Stacey St. John: 16:02

Yeah, and so there was. There was quite a bit of inventory. And again, boy oh boy I always share with people If I would have known when I first started buying in Myrtle Beach what the market was going to do. I would have bought every property known to man. Yeah, I mean oh, but yeah. So long story short, it has been a really neat experience. So the first two properties that we bought, we rehabbed those and sold them a year later, doubled our money on both of them and ended up buying a property that my husband and I will retire into. We use it as a short term rental now, but you know, just to have the ability to build wealth through real estate is something that is so fun. But also being able to take something that was a little ugly duckling and make it an adorable little duckling is super fun as well.

Alex Husner: 16:59

And it's prideful, right. I mean, like now that's something that like. I mean you're going to pour your heart and soul into it. And I think you're at a point where you don't have hundreds of condos, you have a small collection. But I know every time that you and I get together, you'll be driving into town and we'll be making plans to meet up and you'll say I'm just going to stop at home, goods first, and you're always doing errands and getting new things for the properties. And whenever I hear that, I just think that that sounds like fun and I'm sure you put a lot into those properties to make them an exceptional experience.

Stacey St. John: 17:29

But I and sorry to interrupt you, but that is something that I am very passionate about, and even in the properties that I manage. So I'm very particular about what they look like, because that is, you know, for me and my, my cozy getaways Brand, that is something that really sets us apart, that, you know, our guests can expect to stay in a beautiful property and have a fabulous guest experience, and so the aesthetic doesn't always have to be you know my designs, but it has to scream comfort, warm, inviting, updated, modernized things like that.

Annie Holcombe: 18:12

I wanted to ask you you touched on something that Alex and I have we've talked to a lot of people about, and it's that creating wealth through the real estate and through buying these properties. And one of the things that has come up from the larger, more enterprise side of conversations that we've had is this notion on the smaller up and coming side of the business, or the short term rental side, if you will, of the building wealth. And there are people that will throw out the statements of leverage over leverage buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. And it's like but you'll get so rich and you'll be able to cash out. And I've been in the business since the late nineties and so I've been through a lot of the different economical woes. You know ups and downs and within where I live in the panhandle, we've had oil spills and hurricanes and obviously COVID and we had a massive hurricane a few years back, and so you're just going through all of those things and then seeing how real estate goes up, down, up down. It worries me when you tell people my son is 22 and he hear oh well, if you would just buy real estate, you know you could retire and I was like I just don't think it's that simple and I really I worry that there are a lot of people that are coming into it that aren't getting the right information from the right places. So how do you cut through that noise? Because I think what you're doing is you're intentional about trying to create a, like a safe environment to have conversations, to ask questions, to get that knowledge, but you're not doing it in a way that's, you know, I've got to use Chevy right down the road, and if you take this Chevy, you can go train it in on a Camaro. And then there's this whole like wheeling and dealing mentality that's out there and I just find it unsettling, I guess would be the best word.

Stacey St. John: 19:48

I'm so glad that we're talking about this because I do feel like that is a misconception, and so a lot of the people, and this is how I see it and it's just an opinion. So my best friend says this OK, and so I'm going to say it's Gretchen's fault. That I'm sharing. Quote.

Annie Holcombe: 20:07

Gretchen's going to pay the question. It's her fault.

Stacey St. John: 20:11

Opinions are like assholes.

Annie Holcombe: 20:13

Everyone has one. Yeah, ok.

Stacey St. John: 20:15

So, yeah, ok, I think that there is a big misconception that Well, I shouldn't say a misconception because there are people out there that do the icky, like get rich quick scheme, yeah, and I want nothing to do with that and, quite honestly, I feel very disheartened when I see people buying real estate that is not going to cash flow Right. And so I believe that the short term rental space a lot of the folks come into the short term rental space from mindset that I'm going to build wealth through real estate. The problem is is they have not learned the fundamentals of real estate investing, and so you have to leverage data to know is this a viable investment for me? Does it meet my buying criteria? Why am I even investing in real estate? Some people invest in real estate just for the tax benefits. They're not looking for a cash flowing property. Other people need the cash flow. They don't really care about the tax benefits. Some people are looking at a cash on cash return. I have a certain criteria I'm looking for. Others are looking for a payback period. Others are looking for I need to buy a property because I just sold one and I'm doing a 1031 exchange and I have to park this money. And so so many people are coming into the short terminal space because they've seen a video on YouTube saying if you buy an Airbnb, you're gonna retire to the Caribbean in three years. And I'm here to tell you, my friends, it's not the case. It's not true. You have to run your numbers, you have to understand your numbers and you have to make data driven decisions in real estate. And I think a lot of people, unfortunately, are coming into the short terminal space because, again, they've seen that video, but they're buying real estate with consumer eyes and consumer brain. They're like oh my gosh, this house is so cute. It's totally gonna be the cutest thing on Airbnb I have Right, yeah.

Alex Husner: 22:36

Right, yeah.

Stacey St. John: 22:37

And guess what? They are buying two, three, four, five properties before they're even cash flowing on the first one, Right yeah, they're gonna be in foreclosure before they get their first rental.

Alex Husner: 22:48

That's a scary part of all this and we talk about this a lot on the show that in the last couple of years, these people that have bought and the realtors that are just showing them crazy numbers that are just not even realistic and those are the homeowners right now that this year, as things have started to normalize, that are knocking at the door of the rental companies. And what have you done? For me lately, it doesn't matter these last couple of years, but I thought that was gonna continue forever and it really it doesn't behoove the realtor. I don't think that it's necessarily. Realtors are trying to do this maliciously. I think that they are just going by data that's not necessarily always accurate. I mean, there's some things that I see in tools that we use that I'm like that is not an accurate projection. But managers who know a market will give you a range and they're gonna give you. If it's in a condo building like Myrtle Beach, I would talk to people like you that know certain buildings that you have history in and you can give them a realistic forecast of what things were like pre COVID in COVID and what you expect for their future. I mean, you know that property and it's just it's important for those realtors to make those connections with the local property managers and don't just go buy what you see online.

Stacey St. John: 23:55

In some of these crazy statistics. And I'm so glad you're saying that too and I'm a licensed real estate agent, so I'm allowed to say this, but I feel like most real estate agents who sell short-term rentals need to learn short-term rentals. Short-term rentals yeah, they need to understand how an investor analyzes a property so that they are sharing relevant information. And if they don't have that relevant information, they need to understand where to find it. I see so many real estate agents to your point, alex that are just throwing numbers out there. Or, oh, you know what? This did X amount of dollars last year. Well, guess what? 2023 travel trends are very different than 2022. And it doesn't matter what it did last year. I need to know what this property is gonna do, potentially moving forward. And what did it do in 2019, before the pandemic ever hit. So I feel like there is a lot of opportunity out there for real estate agents to up their game, and I say that with all the love in the world, but I feel like it borders sometimes on irresponsibility. And I feel like real estate agents can really shine when they know the short-term rental industry and therefore they can really serve their clients in a whole different way.

Annie Holcombe: 25:18

So that begs the question, something I think we as a, the VR side of the business is wrestling with, and I think how do we bring together the two sides of the business, the STR, which, if you talk to somebody on the VR side, that's what they see as the Wild West, the people out there that are doing all these things. But again, we're the same business. It's just a matter of kind of like, where you are in your journey, where you are as a market, where you are in your educational track, whatever. But how do we bring the two sides together and unify against those voices? Because, let's face it, it's just any business that's out there, there's always gonna be some bad actors, there's always gonna be people that are like pay me $1,000 and I'll tell you how you can make a million dollars. And then, of course, everybody's gonna be like great, you're gonna give me the lottery numbers, like this is exactly what I want. So they're doing those kind of things and it's disingenuous and it's not good for the business. But the problem is they get such a lion's share of the audience and the stage and the voice and it's like how do we pull them back?

Speaker 2: 26:20

We send in Stacy to the rescue Get her a cake.

Alex Husner: 26:25

Q stage left.

Stacey St. John: 26:29

Well, as far as bringing people together, I think about there is so much opportunity for folks in the short-term rental side of the business to learn from the professional vacation rental managers. Right, I've done this on a massive scale for decades. Yeah, exactly Exactly, you know, there's so much to learn, and so I feel like it's almost like to forgive the analogy, but it's like two different generations. It's like I consider you guys on the vacation rental side like the experienced Don't say grandma- Don't say grandma, I'm going to say it.

Alex Husner: 27:14

We're like as an industry, like what are, like our mid 50s. We're the professors.

Annie Holcombe: 27:19

No, we're the college professors. How about?

Alex Husner: 27:21

that.

Stacey St. John: 27:22

OK, yes, I love that You're the college professors and on the short term rental side, it's like we're the college students, like college students. Yeah, exactly yeah, so there's a tremendous amount to learn from the vacation rental side and at the same time, there's also think about all the teachers that I learned from my students, my coaching students. I learned from them every day, and so when we flip that model, what a cool opportunity it is for true real estate investors to help bring education to the professional managers who may look to invest in real estate in the future and build generational wealth. And you absolutely can. You have to do it the right way and you have to do it with data, but you absolutely can change your financial future when you invest in real estate, and that is a really cool thing that we can blend those two worlds. I feel like it's conversations like this, like I totally want to do a group hug right now. Yeah, you know, let's the three of us be responsible for bringing that bridge together, because I think it's huge. Yeah, I think it's huge.

Alex Husner: 28:39

Well, at the end of the day, I think everybody has to realize we can't fight this anymore. I know back 2009 when I was first hired at Condo World, I was hired for a project that was about building a website. It turned very different than what my career there was, but the website was supposed to promote professionally managed vacation rental companies not even our own, our own included, but other vacation companies in the area and in Hilton Head and Charleston Show the benefits of booking with a professional company versus renting directly from an owner. This is as VRBO started to catch some steam behind them. Airbnb was not a name that anybody knew at this point, but our owner, roy Clyburn, saw this coming and I mean he was thinking it was going to be very dire, that this could ruin the whole business and the whole industry, and it wasn't quite that bad. But he was correct in assessing that there was something coming on the horizon and we needed to be able to get out in front of it, and I think from the efforts that we did, it put us in the right mindset to be able to handle when things really kind of started going in the direction. I mean. The risk was we thought the homeowners were going to come to us and they're going to say we don't need you anymore, we're just going to do this on our own. And some did, but I would say more than 75 percent. If they did that, they came back pretty quickly because they thought it looked like it was an easy thing to do. But it's not. It's a very complicated business. And then when they also realized that if you're with a professional company, all the bookings that we got I mean we were a 95 percent book direct company we weren't relying on those channels, we were bringing business that they could definitely not access on their own, and so we were able to kind of fend that off. But we had the right mindset going into it. But looking ahead for the future, I think, is still something that everybody needs to consider. And now fast forward. Where we're at, we know that people being able to do this on their own, it's here to stay. That's not leaving. So now I think where the industry is going is the professional companies are looking more to adopt these the short-term rental side into just understanding that we're all playing in the same sandbox and making sure now that we're all playing by the same rules. That's really the most important thing. It's not about keeping people out or making it more complicated for them. It's about making sure that there are good actors that are in these buildings and in these destinations, that we're sharing similar guests and experiences, and I think we're in a good place. I remember when Annie and I first started the podcast, we got a little bit of a tiff over this because I was under the. I was still back in the mindset of like, no, no, no, like we don't want individual you know, people with only two or three units coming to VRMA and Annie was the righteous one for sure, and said it's better for the industry, it's going to lift all of us up and ultimately we we agreed by the end of the conversation and and it's continued to prove she was right on that that it is. It is a good thing and it's something that we can't ignore it. So I think the more people that we get like you there in this industry, then the more that argument becomes very much more true.

Stacey St. John: 31:33

Well, and I also think there is. There is power in an abundance mindset there is an absolute yes, 100%, yeah. Right, and so when we have the mindset that again we can learn from one another, we can bring best practices to the short-term rental side. Think about how many short-term rental owners out there would love to be 95% book direct.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Oh sure they would be falling head over heels to be able to do that Right.

Stacey St. John: 32:08

And so, again, I think that there is real power in having the right mindset and the right approach. But at the same time, I think of this as another analogy the short-term rental would be a little boutique hotel or a little bed and breakfast, and the professional vacation rental managers might be the Marriott. There's a place for both. And so I think, just learning in a transitional time how to play nice in the sandbox together, and for the people who don't want to play nice, I say get out of the sandbox.

Alex Husner: 32:41

Right, yeah, I mean, there's the abundant mindset. Is there's enough for everybody? But for the ones that don't see it that way or don't want to play nicely, there's another sandbox that kindly exit.

Annie Holcombe: 32:52

Stand right, that's right.

Alex Husner: 32:54

There's plenty of room for that. But I think honestly, I think the answer to the question nobody really knows, I mean, how we bring everybody together. But at this point I think the best way is situations like this, where we have Stacy from one side come on and we have these conversations and I got to come on your show not long ago as well, and I think podcasts have really been part of bridging that gap and there needs to be whether it is VRMA or it's a separate association. There needs to be more of a collective that gathers together. I think that's what's the missing point. Peak here is is that, like we see, the SDR side have their big, exciting conferences and professional side, we have our conferences. There needs to be something that bridges that for in-person events. And I don't know. I don't have the answer to that, but I hope that somebody can figure out, or us, I don't know.

Annie Holcombe: 33:46

Well, it's a music festival. No, but you're the problem is there's just so many people, so where do you have some things? So it's got to be something of like that nature to like draw everybody.

Alex Husner: 33:56

But there's been some really cool creative ideas on, like Coachella. I mean, like I'm serious, like some very creative things of like what if there was an event that brought together managers of all kind? What if it even brought the homeowners? What if we even brought the guests? Like what if we had big concerts? Or like we had a headliner, and what would that do for the industry? It's like the South by Southwest event. Like this could be something that could be much larger than what it is right now. But who knows, maybe we'll get into the conference planning.

Annie Holcombe: 34:25

Yeah, we'll do our own association and get it going.

Stacey St. John: 34:29

Well, and you know I think it would be cool, I'm just putting this out there. You know I have an event every year. Well, this is 2024 will be the third year. It's the short-term rental virtual summit for women, which I just signed up for, and I cannot wait.

Alex Husner: 34:45

When is this? When is this? I did?

Stacey St. John: 34:47

not know about this January 23rd through the 25th of 2024. But, perhaps we could put together a panel of women from the vacation rental management side, and Alex and Annie, I'm going to officially invite you to be on that panel right now. Oh, but wouldn't it be great for us to bring together a panel that come from the VRMA side? Allow you to experience what it's like to be on the short-term side. I think that would be amazing, and I think what you'll find is a group of people who are equally as eager to meet and learn from you and support you. I think that would be a really cool thing. I would say yes, I don't see why.

Annie Holcombe: 35:35

I would not want to do that. I think that sounds like a great idea. I think we're probably available.

Alex Husner: 35:40

And then I mean maybe this someday turns into an in-person event. You know, I mean like this, this could be, who knows? I am super excited. I was telling you before we hit play that I actually just signed up for it the other day and I wanted to walk through the whole process, and I've gotten several emails from you. Now You've sent out last year's recordings. I've watched some of those and it's a world-class event. I mean you've done an incredible job of putting that together. I do have to ask, though like, how do you do it? Like, do you have a team that is centered around the events and this stuff? I mean, it certainly can't just be you that's putting all this together.

Stacey St. John: 36:12

Girl. I have the most amazing team and I could not do any of this without them. So Lauren is my. I always tell people she's my right hand, my right arm, my right elbow, my right shoulder, my right hip, she's my right. Everything she has done just a tremendous job in so many things she is literally I could not do what I do without her. But I have a team of folks who help on the back end. So I've got on my coaching and consulting and non-property management side of the business, I've got a team of five people that help on a regular basis. And then on my short-term rental property management side, I've got a team of about five that help actually six, I should say that help on a regular basis, and so I'm very much of the mindset and something I learned in my EOS training. You got to delegate, to elevate, and so I really think of myself as being the CEO of my business and I'm very intentional about empowering my team to have them be creative and make good judgment calls, and of course, I'm here to support them and remove roadblocks.

Alex Husner: 37:31

But that's the way that I operate and, quite candidly, the way that I'm able to get stuff done and I agree with that so much and I think there's so much to be said with that of just, you know, not micromanaging, but giving people the authority and the autonomy that you trust them and you want them to make decisions, but then also, when they need something, being able to quickly get back to them so that they feel confident in making those decisions.

Annie Holcombe: 37:53

Yeah, like we just had this conversation, Alex, I don't know. I wanted to ask you a question, all of that and again we've got the women's conference coming up and one of the things that has kind of been it's been in the back of my mind and sort of kind of lep forward as a passion project. I sat down with Heather Bayer on her podcast a while back and her and I started talking about, you know, the education for the people in the business and it dovetailed into mentorship and how do we mentor women and leaders. And when I came up in the business I didn't have and Alex and I talked about this when we started the podcast we didn't have a lot of like female people to women to look at in the business that either wanted to help or would help or just even in the business it was just very male dominated and I was taken aback. It was the last women's conference. They had a statistic that had been floating around and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of like over 60% of the women in vacation rental or people working in vacation rentals were women, but less than 3% of them occupied that upper tier C suite VP level and so we see that as a young person coming in, or even somebody who's been in the business for 20 plus years, you think, well, I guess I'm never going anywhere. And so being able to find someone who you can look towards, like again, a mentor can be somebody above you and somebody below you, it doesn't have to be someone who's your equal. How do you think and how do you see the ability for you to offer mentorship out and to encourage people to ask for mentors? Because I guess, you know, when I was in my 20s I craved it. I just didn't know that's what I was craving and I didn't know how to ask for it. I didn't know where to go look for it. So for me, this whole the passion project has been like putting stuff together where we can get people who are willing to be mentors, finding those people that want to be mentors. So, at the women's conference, where Michelle Marquis and I are doing a session where we're going to help people get introduced to 50 women or 20, I think it's 25 that want to go ahead and offer their mentor services. They're there, their knowledge base, and then they will, you know, get matched with somebody who's looking. You know, mentee, they'll get matched with us and we'll do two parts of that and hopefully after the women's summit it will continue to go in. These relationships we'll build. But I throw it back to you. You know you're doing a really great job, kind of building a community. How do we take that and make it a mentoring service or a mentoring mindset?

Stacey St. John: 40:17

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad that you asked that and I love that you're doing that effort, and I would totally be at the women's summit. I'm going to be in Cancun Drinking on the beach?

Annie Holcombe: 40:28

No way I would be there. Okay, I mean, you get a pass this time.

Stacey St. John: 40:35

But one of the things that I think has been successful for my own mentorship program. I have a mentoring and mastermind program, and one of the things that I always share with my folks is look for opportunities to pay it forward, and there are always going to be people that you meet in this industry that know more than you, but there's always going to be people that you meet that are one step behind you, and you don't have to be an expert to help someone, you just have to be one step ahead of them. And so what we've set up and again it sounds like you're taking these great strides too but in my program what we do is we have accountability pods, and so there are small groups of women who meet on a regular basis and outline their goals for the upcoming week, and they're all encouraging each other every day, but they're also accountable to their goals and the accountability pod leaders. Then I meet with and mentor them. So if we think about mentoring as a pyramid, shall we say, and we can trickle down much faster and have legs much better and spread out when we train other people in training other people, does that make sense?

Annie Holcombe: 41:57

Yeah, I love that because you're able to get that disseminate the information out a lot easier.

Alex Husner: 42:03

And that's all from your Facebook group. That's how those are all.

Stacey St. John: 42:06

Well, so outside of my Facebook group, I have a mentoring, a mastermind program called the STR Success Accelerator, and it's with an accelerator program that we have the capability pods.

Alex Husner: 42:19

Okay, okay.

Annie Holcombe: 42:20

I love it If you would be so gracious. At some point we're going to be doing more mentor conversations. I would love to invite you in to be a part of it, even to help us shape what it looks like, Because I think it's something we all see in need and there's probably, I think, there's 12 women kind of on the group that are doing it right now and it really was just like kind of like all of us that have been doing in the business for 30 years, or like how do we take those ones that have just coming into it and then bring in like the Alex in the middle layer that you know, like we can just again sharing, because I learned from Alex every day and vice versa, for sure, and we share back and forth, and so it's like it's not if this mindset you always have to have someone above you to learn, because it's just.

Alex Husner: 43:04

It's always about sharing ideas and that's honestly, the best situations that I've been in that have been a mentorship relationship have been from that understanding that it for mentorship to really work, it needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship. That you know it doesn't mean that one person is older or younger, that you're both learning from each other. For me at least, I think maybe there's more structured mentorships where it's more, you know, one person is definitely the mentor and one's the mentee. But that's not any situation that I prefer. I prefer being in a situation where I mean, even you know my mentor, my boss Roy, who from Conda world, I mean, he was 85 years old and was my mentor for 13 years but I taught him a lot of things. Like, I mean, he taught me a ton, but I taught an old dog new tricks too, and we just really you know that was a great part of our relationship. So I think you've got to find somebody within your career or even if it's not within the job that you're in, but that you're also helping them and that's where you build that commitment and that you know wanting to help.

Stacey St. John: 44:10

Absolutely, and I think I would just encourage any of your listeners to look for opportunities to help other people. You know, even if you don't get asked for help. You know we all have strengths. Every one of us in this world have strengths, and when we see opportunities that we can use our God-given strengths to help someone else, why not do it Right? And I think if, again, we all take that proactive approach and let's just look for ways that we can give back to other people, I promise you, I promise you, it will come back to you.

Annie Holcombe: 44:51

I swear you're my sister. Yeah, I know.

Alex Husner: 44:55

We say a lot of shows are a long time coming, but this is definitely one that falls into that.

Annie Holcombe: 45:01

You speak to everything that I like, just like I always know that I'm never gonna be the smartest person in the room, but if I can try to be, just be the nicest person in the room because you never know what somebody else is struggling through. I mean you just don't. And I just I always try to go into that like, just with that mindset of like just be kind and you said it earlier like what you give you're gonna get. If you're giving out that kindness, it eventually it'll all come back to you. I mean, it's just, it is a mindset and it has to be a focus, and I think if we had more of that, like, what could we accomplish?

Alex Husner: 45:31

Amen. Well, I think this is an amazing, amazing note to end on and how inspirational and just exciting and this we've been excited to have you on for a long time and excited to continue the conversation with you, to participate in that event in January. That'll be super fun, Hopefully. Have you come in for sure. Come in and be part of some of the events and different ideas that Annie and I are working on for 2024 as well. So until then and hopefully we'll see you sooner than that, but until then, if our audience wants to reach out, what's the best place for them to find you?

Stacey St. John: 46:04

Oh golly. Probably the best place for them to find me is on my website, stacystaintjohncom. From there you can find all the things, All the things, All the things, All the things, All the ways.

Alex Husner: 46:16

You know we do the exact same way. People are like do you use my Instagram handle or my LinkedIn handle? You can go to alexandannipodcastcom and from there, you can find everything.

Annie Holcombe: 46:24

You can find everything. You can find our social media.

Alex Husner: 46:26

You can contact us. You can read all sorts of information you probably don't even need to see. But yeah, it's all there, that's awesome.

Stacey St. John: 46:35

Well, I just want to congratulate you both. I mean, I love the fact that you have this podcast and this platform to share with other people and you're killing it, so congrats to you both we appreciate that.

Alex Husner: 46:49

We appreciate that it's fun being able to do this alongside other people in the industry like you that are supportive and lift each other. And you know, at the end of the day it's funny when people I have to tell a story but I get this ass all the time of like do you listen to that? Are you sure Like you listen to that podcast? They're a competitor. We do not look at other podcasts as competitors, like that's just not Annie and I's mindset whatsoever, because if you're a podcaster, you know I mean I subscribe, I have like 50 shows that I listen to, so it's not like if you just listen to one, you don't listen to others. So it's a mutually beneficial situation for all of us to be sharing this information.

Annie Holcombe: 47:26

So, yeah, Absolutely, we make each other better. Absolutely, I love it. I love it Well, stacey thank you.

Alex Husner: 47:32

Yeah, thank you, stacey. Thank you Everyone. We're tuning in and we will see you next week. Get the new season of Best чем pergiمكن que provite.