Building Vacation Rental Tech for Customers, Not Investors with Vinny Dicarlo and Josh Parry of Ciirus

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There is a limit to how much you can automate in vacation rentals, which is controversial to say because as a tech provider, we're supposed to preach the gospel of automation, but this isn't just tech space. This is the hospitality tech space.

Annie Holcombe 0:10

What's getting lost is that human, the H in hospitality. I mean, that's the business that we're in.

Alex Husner 0:15

The growth at all cost mentality, there is a cost. We see that too of these companies that have grown way too fast.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

We've been approached probably four and nine times over the years by larger groups saying, let's buy your company, that's a success story, right? But for us, that has never been the happily ever after. And that's definitely, I think, kicked up a stink with companies that are larger than us.

Sponsor Spotlight: Ciirus

Alex Husner 0:35

Running a vacation rental company is complicated enough. Your technology should make it easier, not harder. You've got homeowners counting on you for results, guests who need answers at all hours, a team that's already stretched, and somehow you're still supposed to find time to grow. And that's one of the things that stood out to us about Cyrus. They've been family-owned and independent since 2008, and they understand that property managers don't just need software, they need solutions that actually make the business easier to run. Cyrus gives you the technology to manage your operation, but they're much more than just a property management system. Through their Love Rentals program, you can also tap into a team that helps with listing optimization, distribution, revenue management, and guest sales and service. So instead of adding another tool to your tech stack and then figuring out the rest on your own, you have the option to get real support from people who understand this business and the day-to-day realities that come with it. And right now, Cyrus is offering three months free to Alex Nanny listeners. Just make sure you tell them you heard about Cyrus on the Alex Nanny podcast when you reach out. Learn more at Cyrus.com. That's C-I-I-R-U-S.com. Now back to the show. Welcome to Alex Nanny, the Real Woman of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie. And we have today Vinny DiCarlo and Josh Perry of Cyrus. So good to see you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Hey guys, how's it going?

Annie Holcombe 1:56

This has been literally five years in the making. I feel like we've known you guys for such a long time and have admired you and watched you and seen you at shows, and you're always such a delight to be around. So it's good to catch up. Um, there's been a lot going on with you. And so before we get into it and be able to share all this stuff, why don't you guys tell us a little bit about each other? Um, Vinny, maybe tell us about Josh. No, I'm just kidding. Um, because I'm sure you've got good stories. Vinny, well, introduce us to you and tell us a little bit about your background, and then we'll go over to Josh and learn a little bit about him.

unknown 2:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Hey guys, I'm Vinny DeCala, um, CEO of Cyrus, a family business uh started by uh Josh's dad and my dad uh 18 years ago. And we've been uh doing this since we were kids. Uh I'm now 36 years old, and um I've known Josh ever since I moved to the United States when I was uh about 15 years old. And I'll uh Josh and I'm sure we'll tell you the story afterwards. And and this is my uh my best friend Josh, uh, who's my business partner, and I'll let Josh introduce himself.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, thank you, Vinny. Uh, I'm a little bit disappointed that we're not gonna play the newlywed game because I really was hyped about that. So next time. Next time, right?

Alex Husner 3:09

Yeah, part two, part two. We'll do that live in person at one of the events. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Good deal. Well, thank you so much for having us, uh, guys. This is Josh, the Chief Product Officer and Vinny's co-partner at Cyrus. Um, I had the pleasure of working one-on-one uh all day, every day with property managers who need solutions. And um, I have the pleasure of working with them to figure out exactly how companies like us can give them the solutions that they need. Um, we'll talk a little bit today about our philosophy, what makes us different. I'm positive that everybody listening has heard the same thing from a hundred different PMSs before. And uh I think we'll be a refreshing change from that. Uh so we're really looking forward to the conversation and uh telling you a little bit about how we tick and uh sharing some of our insights.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Just as Josh said, uh we're we're different as our parents always reminded us as we were kids. We're very different.

Alex Husner 4:02

Well, I mean, every everything about it feels different. And as Annie said, we're we're really excited to talk to you guys today. Annie's gotten to work with you in a couple different capacities, but I've really just kind of seen you guys, chatted at shows, um, talked to some of your customers at the shows and seen what's gone on at the booth. And one of the things that stands out is that you come at this from a little bit of a different perspective that Josh, you mentioned earlier. You know, of course, you're a property management system, but you guys really look at this as you are partners with your clients, and you've had clients that have been with you for many, many, many years, and you offer a larger range of services than most traditional property management systems do as well. But how did that mentality kind of come into play? And Vinny, I'll put that one to you.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah, it's a it's a really interesting question, right? Because I think there's if you look at the way the landscape has grown in vacation rentals over the years, people have come at uh building software and providing services for property managers in a in a variety of different ways. And the typically what we've seen is the companies uh they build an idea, they sell the idea, and then they carry on. Uh, we've come from a from a truly from a family business background. And this is really what differentiates us uh Josh's dad and my dad started the company 18 years ago. And the focus on the company was to help at the time the local property managers in Orlando to flourish and to grow, uh, to give them uh an online PMS uh that allowed them to connect to at the time the big deal was Home Away Verbo. Um, this is before Airbnb even had an API. Um, the goal there was to build long-term partnerships with those guys. And kind of as we fast forward now, 18 years later, uh many of those companies are still our customers. We've got lots of cool new companies spread out and become customers every day. Uh, but what keeps us focused is that uh the customer should be a customer for life. If you look at how long a property manager typically stays with the PMS, uh historically, uh, in fact, really, any software user of any software platform, uh people are benchmarking five years, six years, seven years maximum to keep a customer. Uh for us, it's uh it's a lifetime ordeal. Um, our parents, when they ran the company, passed customers down to us. Uh, we've now uh maintain those customers, us and the other 45 members of our team here, of our family here. And our goal is to then pass those customers down to our kids. So there is no exit plan for us. Um the the plan is to build as many long-term happy relationships as possible and make those relationships truly fruitful for our customers and also for us, so that we can continue to be partners for another five, 10, 15 years. It's um it's a model kind of if we decided a long time ago, and that we're sticking with.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, I think it it speaks to our upbringing in the short-term rental industry as well. I mean, go back not to date myself, um, my first overseas vacation. I'm not a native Florida boy. If you can't tell by my accent, neither is Benny. Um, I took my first vacation at the age of four in I think in 1998 or nine. We went to um Orlando for the first time. We stayed in a uh what the Brits call a villa, which is a vacation rental near Disney, and we were hooked. Uh within a few years, my parents had invested in in one or two short-term rental homes in the same neighborhood that we visited. We started to learn what really worked and what didn't work as a homeowner working with a property manager. And as Vinny said, at the time, uh the property managers they didn't really have a place to go for reliable tech partnership if they weren't considerably sized, right? At the time, and one of the most popular PMS was Property Plus at the time, and they required a physical installation of a server in the office, and you know, heaven forbid there was a hurricane or worse. So we were seeing a significant gap for an operator who understands what it's like to run a small business, who understands what it's like to have clients who are also families trying to grow their business. Um, and we've carried that approach through to the future. Um, having a personal relationship with every client, making ourselves available, uh, being accountable. Um, I think it shouldn't be as big of a differentiator as it is, but it that really is the differentiator.

Annie Holcombe 8:31

Yeah, and I think it's a it's a huge differentiator now because, you know, as we're talking off camera, there's there's AI and people, everybody's just like absorbed in AI and how to implement it. And I've been hearing from people that reach out and say, you know, I'm managing hundreds of properties and I don't have any team, everything is is automated and everything is AI. And so Alex and I have had the conversation about like, you know, there's a difference between AI and automation. I mean, those two things aren't necessarily the same, but people get lost in that. And I think that we what's getting lost is that human, the H in hospitality. I mean, that's the business that we're in. And so to find a technology partner that is both focused on technology and providing the best technology and platform for their users, but also making sure that you're infusing the hospitality and the human connection, you're just not seeing that as much. But I do think that there's an a groundswell of people that want that and they don't want to be set aside by their connectivity partners saying, here, go to a, go to a fact, go, you know, factoid, go to an AI bot, chat with this person. And it really, once you get spiraling out of control, that's when you can talk to a human. And by that point, they're angry and you know, likely to leave. But you guys have done a good job in in solidifying your relationships. And I know when I was in property management and I, you know, broke my or cut my teeth in Florida as well, there wasn't a lot of PMSs, and there wasn't a lot. And I do recall when you guys kind of came out, it was like you you owned the Orlando market. I mean, everybody in Orlando knew who Cyrus was. I mean, like there was just there was no mistaking that. And then I think over time, you guys have just quietly just been retooling the platform and doing the things that, you know, to your point, Josh, you listen to your partners, you're doing the things that they want you to do. But um I think that that's where we want to take this conversation is understand you've not gone away. I mean, you guys are here, you've been growing and you've been growing steadily. You don't have a board of directors and uh, you know, people, private equity that's come in to tell you that you need to grow by 25% year over year and start feeing everybody to death, which is what has been happening in some other locations. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your growth and your strategy and and kind of the the method of the method to your madness, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

We've approached it in a in a calm way. So I think there's there's many ways to grow. Uh, you can throw millions of dollars at uh at Google or other pay-per-click methods. And now we see a lot of uh the larger competitors in the space do that. Uh, but for us, uh, we we figured out early on that's not the right way to grow partnerships. Uh, the right way to grow partnerships is figure out in what markets, in what scenarios, does our product work well, and then replicate that with like-minded partners throughout. And I think Josh can probably lean into some of the like initiatives that we've been taking as far as how to

Building customer relationships designed to last

SPEAKER_00 11:14

kind of maintain that growth and build that growth while keeping it personal and human. Because whilst we absolutely have built the entire suite of AI features that our customers would want and need, uh, auto-responders, uh, pricing, things of that form, our support is still human because that is the age and hospitality human. And that is uh absolutely a commodity that sounds like it's shrinking in size right now in our industry. But in turn, I think its value is going up, and that's where uh we're honing in.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

And as as we see, um this is the topic's been beaten to death, so I'm not gonna dw dwell on on this uh acquisition aspect. But as you look at um all the acquisitions happening to the property management companies and and then also with the vendors and the PMS companies, there is this kind of intangible pressure that I think a lot of operators feel to grow at all costs and grow for growth's sake because that's what everybody else is doing. And the growth is not always aligned with customer satisfaction. We see that all the time when companies get a huge cash infusion from an investor who came from outside the hospitality space, and it's great, uh, it's exciting, products come out very quick. Then the bill comes due, and investors start asking for a return. And that's when the pressure gets dialed up. They start adding the fees, they start cutting human support in lieu of AI-based support, and the resources dwindle and the investment in the product falls away because that investment has to get paid back. That's the nature of the beast. Um, and I don't have a problem, we don't have a problem with that. That's the way that you know uh the US has always worked, and industrialized countries, that's the way it is. But we're very lucky being independently financed, we don't have that external pressure. We're funded by our clients and we're incentivized directly by our clients' success. We don't have a quota to meet um in terms of the quantities of you know how much we sell. The quota is our customers happy. And when they're happy, everything else follows. It sounds cliche, but it's genuinely true. And I think that most of our clients, also being family-run businesses like we are, it kind of hits home with them. Um they're very conscious about being right-sized. Um, I'll talk to property managers sometimes who they're starting out, they've got four or five homes, and they'll I'll have them say, uh, I've got a goal to be at 150 homes by the end of the year. And I kind of find my respectful way to interrogate that plan a little bit, right? And and then I'll have, on the other hand, a property manager with four or five homes who says, This year, my goal is just to establish baseline operational efficiency and get my ducks in a row so that I can meet a nice controlled growth quota and rights, keep the business right-sized as we scale. Um, and we are 100% aligned with with that as well.

Alex Husner 13:55

Yeah, but you're you're hitting on all the things that just completely resonate with Annie and I. And we've talked about this a lot this year. Actually, our whole plan for this year, the growth blueprint and how we put the content together was because of that exact thing, that the growth at all cost mentality, there is a cost. And I think it applies equally to the suppliers as it does to the property managers. And we we see that too of these companies that have grown way too fast. They didn't have the right planning, they didn't have the right operations, which operations is the lifeblood of the company in place. And all this time and money that they've spent in acquiring and getting new homeowners, they're bleeding them out as fast as they're getting them. And, you know, I think it's so much has changed since when you guys started for sure, but even just in the last, you know, six, eight years. And we just had Terry White on uh this past week for our 300th episode. Yeah, he Terry's great. He's an OG. And he said he was like, you know, 2018, 2019, those are the good old days. And they and they really were, and in the years prior to that, because there wasn't so much of this feeling of this gold rush of you have to build something to sell it. And I was listening to another podcast um that actually had uh Robert from Shark Tank on it the other day, and and he was talking to Ed Milette, and they were talking about, you know, did Shark Tank start putting an idea in people's heads that you had to build a business to sell it? Because that wasn't why everybody built businesses back in the day. And I think that mentality has certainly bled into short-term rentals and, you know, for better or worse, I think it's created a different environment. And, you know, really this uh industry is is built on companies like you guys, that they're family, a lot of them are family-run businesses that they're been passed through the generations. And you don't see that quite as much on the tech side, but it's it's refreshing to see that same approach from where you guys come from and how you apply that to the clients.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Businesses that can scale for the sake of scale, they rely on repeatable, reliable patterns that they can just rinse and repeat. Short-term rentals is not that. Every operator is a mean, every owner, every get, every stay, every furnishing layout, every clean, they are all different. There is a limit to how much you can automate in vacation rentals, which is controversial to say because as a tech provider, we're supposed to preach the gospel of automation, but uh this isn't just the tech space, this is the hospitality tech space. There are some things that as a savvy operator, you need to keep your hands on. And I'm sure we can get into that deeper and kind of name some examples.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Josh, I think we've kicked up a bit of a stink uh over the years with that, uh maybe some of our competitor and competitor groups. Because there has constantly been uh throughout the last especially seven or eight years, as you guys rightly said, this just uh view of everything needs to grow, it needs to acquire, uh, it needs to everything needs to spin out of control, everything needs 10x, 20x multipliers in order to be successful. And we just have not believed that true. Um to what you guys are saying. I think we've we've been approached probably between four and nine times over the years by larger groups saying, okay, let's let's buy your company. That's a success story, right? Uh you've built something, we'll buy it from you, there'll be a payout, everybody will live happily ever after. But for us, that has

Why Ciirus has chosen measured growth over growth at all costs

SPEAKER_00 17:15

never been the happily ever after. And that's definitely, I think, kicked up a stink with especially companies that are larger than us, because we are by far not the largest player in this industry. And quite frankly, we will never be the largest player in this industry. We want to be the best, we believe ourselves to be the best for our customers, but what we do not want to be is the largest. So I think that we are absolutely, at least in comparison to our technology uh contemporaries, completely counter to everything that they believe in and what they do. However, where we are aligned is with our customers, who are typically medium-sized companies like us, who are family businesses like us, family in either the traditional or in the moral sense. Um, because there's, you know, there's different definitions to family. And uh I think we the idea and the concept is to be loyal to your customers, your team members, and the longevity of the business. So uh it has been counter to what many of our contemporaries have done, and it definitely has kicked a stink up over the years. But this is why we maintain our uh our steady and moderate growth, and why we maintain our multi-year, uh multi-year um partnerships, um, which is very different.

How independent ownership shapes investment in customers and technology

SPEAKER_00 18:28

But uh we we are a name that you guys saw 18 years ago, and it's 18 years later, and we're still a name that you guys see today, and we'll continue to be a name that is seen in 18 years because you know, not quite not quite like the turtle in the hair, uh, but slow and steady does indeed win the race from customer acquisition. Where we need to focus and where we do focus is on our technology, making sure that we're not spending the money on trying to acquire as many new customers as possible. We're spending the money on building the technology and the human support that our customers need for them to keep their businesses as long as possible. So I think that may kind of explain what makes us kind of different and maybe count the culture to other technology companies, at least contemporarily speaking.

Annie Holcombe 19:13

Yeah, and and I I think you always know that you're still in the game when you Google yourself and your competitor comes up because they're buying your keywords. And so I can say that um there are people still buying buying your name um for their benefit. So you're you're definitely not out of the race. So I think that people watch you. Um, but we were we were joking about like there, you know, there's been over over years because you guys are quiet that people are like, oh, they're are they out of business? They're going out of business. There's all these rumors that people get started, and that's like the furthest thing from the truth. And I feel like, you know, Vinny, you and I we I follow you on Instagram. So I like watch your world travels and you fell in love with the with the Asian market and you've learned Japanese and you're learning the sushi culture. And um, it's just fascinating. If anybody wants a good follow on Instagram, Vinny is a really good follow. But he's also, I think, what what's fascinating to me is because you've you you look at everything through the lens of almost like a student. You want to learn. And I think that you guys have applied that to Cyrus and how you develop Cyrus. And I know Josh and I have had lots of conversations when I was on the technology side and talking about advancements and APIs. And I mean, you guys are constantly learning, and you're not just adopting the newest, latest, greatest just because you're you're doing it. It does it make sense for your partners, and in what order does it make sense for your partners?

SPEAKER_04 20:26

Vacation Finder is hybrid

Sponsor Spotlight: Vacation Finder

SPEAKER_04 20:28

OTA. We were created to empower professional property managers and give them the ability to own the guest relationship. Once again, we position ourselves as more cause-related than we do about focusing on profit at the end of the day. I'm Josh Thromberg and I am the CEO of VacationFinder.com. Vacation Finder is exclusively for professional property managers. We require that they be local boots on the ground. Actual individuals are there in the destination that's able to provide customer service and solutions when problems arise. That helps us as Vacation Finder to really build and establish that trust, not only with property managers, but with the guests that we're trying to really look at Vacation Finder as their trusted booking source. For anyone that's a property manager that's out there looking to really focus more on a even a direct booking model, I think Vacation Finder is really an opportunity that they need to consider. We're positioned to be the ally to professional property managers in our industry. We want you to own that guest relationship so that you have communication directly with that guest the moment that the booking occurs. So you're the merchant of record when your own vacation finder. And that's been the vision since day one is how can we create this marketplace that's going to put professional property managers in the driver's seat? How are we going to create a marketplace that communicates to guests the value? That comes with selecting a property that's managed by a professional property manager, what does that provide to them? And that is what we're trying to do is provide the best possible solution for both guests and property managers. If you love our industry, if you love your homeowners and the properties you represent and the guests that come to stay in your properties, and you want to create an experience for them and you want to do right by all the stakeholders, then you absolutely should consider vacation finder.

Annie Holcombe 22:31

I wanted to kind of touch on um what I was mentioning with you, Vinny. You've been traveling and again a kind of a student

Why vacation rental operations cannot automate everything

Annie Holcombe 22:38

of the world, but what is what is like what does that mean for Cyrus? What is what does that mean implicate for the growth of Cyrus globally?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yeah, I'm actually hiring team members uh going around the world and hiring some of the best team members we can find. So I'll give you a little example. Uh, we found some of the best development resources, some of the best developers in the world to be down in Brazil. So I've spent uh last uh two or three months this year down in Brazil in Sao Paulo um and down in Palistas. Uh, these are the best developers in the world. I've never seen such amazing, dedicated software developers as what comes out of Sao Paulo. So I've been there uh bringing on um half a dozen developers. Also, as you guys uh personally know from me, I've been a big Japan afeccionado over the years. And so uh realizing that the Japanese work ethic, especially in technology, is what it is. Uh, we've been doing the same in Japan, but on automation specialists, um, not necessarily coding uh hands-on code, but understanding how to help our customers automate their business. In the Philippines, uh, I've been uh working to bring on more team members for our customers, for our customers' customer service teams. So helping our customers to find resources uh to answer their phones for them, to handle their hospitality. Because as we know, uh when it comes to hospitality, the Philippines brings some of the best talent in the world. Uh, we've been in London uh bringing on um some team members under the revenue management side because the world gets up earlier than we do in the US and we want to make sure we've got 24-7 eyes and ears on revenue management for our customers, uh, along with our AI technology. So the travel comes uh absolutely as a student of the world. Uh we learn so many things from our brothers and sisters across the planet, uh, without a doubt, uh also comes from a personal passion to take my kids everywhere as much as humanly possible. I find travel and meeting other people breaks down all uh racial, uh ideological barriers between people. So I believe travel kills any of those bad things uh in society. So it's mostly to grow the business to ensure that just because our customers' homes are located in the United States, their guests are not just located in the United States, their business is does not just run on Eastern Standard Time. So our goal has been to grow our team, and we're now 45 strong uh with a global uh family of team members who can support those people based based on the best and the brightest of the world, if if that sort of makes sense. And I think Josh could probably add to a bit of that as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, one thing I want to really draw attention to is that um when most companies that do similar things to what we do in this space, when they decide they want to hire internationally, the CEO doesn't go out and personally build relationships, they will hire a call center or um you know use some kind of mass recruitment tool. Um name name a Fortune 500 company and call their customer service line. You're gonna be speaking to somebody who, you know, they they are based internationally. Um there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Your point, um, it's great to hire talent where the talent exists. But our approach is is very different in the sense that we're bringing in dedicated staff members who are gonna grow with us. They're gonna be actually invested in our business, not part of like a mass-produced call center situation. And we remain centered, grounded, managed domestically so that when you pick up the phone and you call us, or when one of your guests, if you use our guest relations service, calls and needs assistance, they are always gonna be talking to somebody who understands not just their business, but even their portfolio and has a relationship with them. Um, you want to call somewhere and know that when you get someone on the other end of the line, A, they're human, B, they actually understand the stakes that you live through every day, they understand the industry, they know the product, uh, rather than having to kind of climb through tier one and tier two and tier three and eventually, you know, right when it's about to hit the fan, I finally get a human to help me. Uh, that approach is anathema to us and to every property manager I've ever spoken to. So uh we that's an approach that uh kind of boggles my mind to see more and more companies going down that path, especially in the hospitality space.

Alex Husner 26:53

Yeah. Well, and another thing is too, I mean, we all know that property managers absolutely hate switching software. I mean, they try and avoid it at all costs, but it it's it's interesting talking to property managers because I feel like in a lot of cases, when they're upset with the software that they're on, it's there's a couple of reasons. One is that they are not aware of all the things that their software actually does. And they see, you know, these shiny product videos of another platform and they think, oh, that's so much better. Um, or two, they're upset about the support. You know, those are kind of like the two main things that that we see. But how do you guys look at that to make sure from a support standpoint that your customers know all the functionality that Cyrus offers, that they are making the most of what you are able to provide

Building a global team around specialized talent

Alex Husner 27:39

them to keep them more sticky so that they're not, you know, easily confused by all the noise around them?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

It's a huge challenge. I would say, and and let me know if you disagree with me, but I would say that in terms of areas where we want to continue, we always want to continue learning, but I think one of the biggest areas that you know we we want to really develop a bigger understanding of is just how we can respectfully find time in the incredibly busy days that our property managers have to help them understand the breadth and the scope of the possibilities within the partnership. Um, and you know, we're very lucky that most of our clients are super happy to sit down for a quarterly or even more frequently if they want it, deep dive and kind of relook at things. But um sometimes that's also just not realistic. It's also not realistic to expect every operator to be able to set aside a solid hour every week to watch a webinar or that we can expect them to read every email. Uh it's just it's a genuine challenge. It's the same challenge that property managers report back when they they give their guests an awesome guest portal, right? Like guest portal is one of the big parts of our software, and um, so much time and development goes into it. But it's really hard to get guests to adopt the technology in the same way for us. It's really hard to get every property manager quiet enough and focused enough to adopt all the things that we have and stay in touch. Um, we have been very lucky because so many of our customers are still with us from day one and they've grown with us. Um, we had that relationship. It just makes it so easy to, you know, we hear every day a customer will throw us an email they got from, you know, some sales development rep or one of these investment-backed companies, just running off of their call script or whatever. And it's like, you can't, you can't end decade-long relationships with AI built sales automations.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

I think really to sum that up, is we pick up the phone, we call our customers once every month. Whether they're too busy or not to talk with us, that's fine, we'll schedule maybe a court. Sometimes we have to turn it into a quarterly, uh, quarterly focused call, but we pick up the phone and call them. Uh between me, Josh, or and three or four of our other customer development reps, um, customer account managers, just call them, tell them this is what's going on, this is the new stuff, are you using this? Uh, do a health check with them. Uh I think it might be harder for some of the um some of our contemporaries to do so because see their resources are focused on the sales and marketing side and not the customer retention side as much. But we we call them. Uh I would be remiss to say that uh our customers, between myself, Josh, and four or five other members of our team, they don't have all of us via text message, cell phone. We work with them directly. Uh, once again, we may not be the best model for scale. You may not see Cyrus with a hundred thousand property managers, uh, but we'll always be the company that you can call personably. So uh our goal is to make sure that our model scales with the human contact, which means uh account management for a business uh size of a property manager, which is a multi-million dollar business, requires a human. So the only way to handle that is for a human to be the primary contact and know that they can just text or call or um email whomever they need to in order to get something fixed. And I think that that's a really important piece of it.

Annie Holcombe 30:54

Yeah, I feel like the ones that at the end of the day are gonna win. And and and let's face it, we need multiple pieces of technology. Everybody can't be, it's not a one size fits all because one thing that we know to be true about this business is every operator operates differently, which makes the technology piece of it even more challenging because you can't put out one piece of software and think that it's gonna fit Panama City Beach and Orlando and Myrtle Beach. You know, so there's there's there's some of that. So there's gonna be a lot of players in this space, but I think the ones that are gonna win are the ones that are focused on providing solid, reliable technology, but then the customer service, because there's nothing more annoying than having a piece of technology that you just cannot understand. And let's face it, because there's so many different pieces of this business run so many different ways, the way someone perceives that tool and uses that tool is different from market to market. So just being able to have that focus, I think, is sets you guys apart. But I would really like to learn a little bit more. I think we, Vinny, you and I met a couple of years ago. And one of the things, and I remember I hadn't seen you in person for a while. We just talked and you were so excited. And I hadn't seen this from an operator in such a long time, so excited about your customer, um, your customer scores. You guys had taken them from, you know, a point where you were like, this is not where we need to be. And you'd really, really ticked it up a notch. And so you were so proud of it. And I loved that for you because it was like it was something that you could share with your team. It was something that maybe people on the outside aren't focused on and don't look at it enough, but that you were very, you knew you needed to listen to your customers. And so that's what you've been doing again, slow and methodically over time. But talk to us about your technology and what you have in place and kind of what you're doing with it. Because again, it goes back to that slow build. You're not looking to have all of the channels. That's one thing I know about you guys. You don't want to have 700 channels that you're trying to maintain API connections to. You want to have the ones that people want and make sure that they're the best. But tell us a little bit about how the technology

Helping property managers get more from their technology

Annie Holcombe 32:49

works and and what you guys maybe have done that people might not be aware of in terms of improvements.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

I'm actually gonna lean on Josh uh for that because um he's got a couple of surprises up his sleeve for the industry that he's gonna be releasing at a couple of large events over the next couple of months. I'm sure I can give you some teasers there. But I'm actually gonna uh uh lean on Josh from a technology uh part specifically. And then just before I do, you you mentioned my excitement over our net promoter score, our MPS, right? And um, so uh I believe metrics are extremely important. I also believe that um you can go over the top and look at too many metrics, and sometimes you start to lose the true meaning of things. But in our business, there are there are two metrics that are of the utmost importance to me. Uh, above and beyond those two metrics, everything else flows, whether it be profit, whether it be uh longevity of business, those two metrics are MPS, net promoter score. Uh of course, that's on a scale of, as we know, like minus 100 to plus 100. And we consistently keep that at over uh 50 for our customers. But the other metric, which is just as important for me, is EMPS, employee net promoter score. The exact same thing, but for your team members, uh same again. Uh, we keep that consistently at over 50. If your team are happy, they'll keep your customers happy. If your customers are happy, your team will be happy. From that, it all kind of just works from there. But Josh can talk about the feature sets and the product of exactly what's keeping those customers happy and in turn what's keeping the team happy and creating that continuous cycle of positivity within the group.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Yeah, I think um, aside from actually delivering results on the technology side and the and the product, the thing that keeps customers the happiest is feeling heard. So the best part of my job by far is getting to sit down with a property manager and just to hear them out, you know, how how are things going? Uh, what do you need, what works well, what's not working so well. We've spent the last about two years now, we've been working on this, uh, a really in-depth feedback initiative with our clients so that we can relaunch the platform uh on a new architecture. Uh, we're we're uh not to get too technical with you, but we're migrating the app from um an MVC application to a React-based application. Um and the work so far, it's so exciting because it's just it's airtight. It doesn't have, you know, the when I click this button, what am I gonna break that so much software out there has? Um we've just been really focused on tightening the nuts and bolts and adding in just quality of life things for our clients, where I'm happy using my software, but you know, it would really brighten my day if it did X, Y, and Z. So the first big release uh that we're right on the doorstep of. Um I hope to meet as many of you guys in the audience as possible at the uh FAVR extravaganza if you're Florida-based uh in late September, and then the VRMA, uh, the international conference there in the first week of October in Nashville, uh, will be unveiling these products for the first time. But uh we're just about ready to launch our brand new mobile app. We've we've studied usage patterns across tools that property managers want to take into the field with them and try to really perfect those. So everything from, of course, reservations and listing management all the way down through the actual stuff that you need to do in the home, like managing cleaning checklists, inspections, uh filling up maintenance reports off the back of issues that housekeepers report from the app, that entire 360-degree stakeholder lifecycle. Um we've really air tightened that. The new app is is uh a testament to it. Um, if you if you guys want to take a look at that, I have to pull up my phone and hold it up to the camera, but uh anybody who wants to take a look, uh shoot me an email and I can share it with you. Uh, we're doing the same thing with our owner portal as well. And this is something, uh Vinny, you've been beating the drum about this. You even uh you you you released uh uh an essay on your LinkedIn account last year. Hey, you know, PMS is we're not really doing justice to kind of the ultimate stakeholder besides the guests, which is the property manager's homeowners. Because when they lack visibility, when they lack KPIs and insights and the ability to understand what their return on investment looks like, it has a really negative effect on the owner-property manager relationship. And as the software provider, I think the worst thing we can do is put our property managers at risk of being in poor standing with their homeowners and the new owner app is going to follow a lot of the same principles I just mentioned, where it's answering a lot of the questions uh that owners typically have and would call or beat down the door of the property manager to get answers to, because they either don't have an owner portal or the owner portal lacks features or is too complicated. Um, so our owner portal 2.0 uh will be out by the end of the year. Um, and that's uh a huge improvement. And I think the icing on the cake, though, is the booking.com integration, which has been over a decade in the making. Uh, you mentioned that we want to really focus, Annie, on the lowest hanging fruit, the biggest opportunities. And so often I'll see property managers who are in a perfect Airbnb verbo market or perfect direct booking market as well. And before focusing on optimizing any of those proven channels, they go, Well, I want to work with the folks who can get me on 100 sites. Okay, but let's look at the operators in your area and understand that no more than three or five percent of their reservations are coming from those 100 plus sites. So let's optimize where you're at, where the guests already

Why customer and employee satisfaction matter together

SPEAKER_01 38:14

are. Uh, they they guests want to book direct. They just need to find you. Guests have no problem booking on Airbnb and Verbo. The listings just need to be well optimized and visible. Um, so uh now that booking.com uh is is joining the fold as one of our direct connections, um, we've been very fortunate to have a high quality enough connection with both Airbnb and Virgo that we we've earned uh preferred and elite distinction over the years with with both of those platforms. Uh to this day, we're we're preferred with both of them. Our scale affects that a little bit because they rank you based on you know how aggressively are you growing. But um the fact that we grow you know in a pretty slow and steady way for a company that does what we do and still remain part of those preferred programs with Airbnb and Virgo, it really speaks to the quality of the work that we do and our customer satisfaction. So we intend to get booking.com um uh on the preferred track as well and really give our customers something that they can grow with and be proud of.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

I actually just wanted to make a summit that I'm personally very proud of our team for is um we were one of the first two APIs for Verbo uh over, I don't know, uh over a decade ago, easily. And we've maintained preferred partnership with Verbo since day one. Um we've also we were the fifth API for Airbnb, um, and now there's hundreds of them. And we've also been on a preferred track, preferred and maintained preferred partnerships with uh with Airbnb for the past 10, 15 years as well, which is also goes for some of our other some of our other contemporaries as well. But once again, uh it's probably don't being as we're not the same size as some of the uh the other guys out there

Ciirus’ new mobile app, owner tools, and Booking.com integration

SPEAKER_00 39:55

marketing, you probably wouldn't see that as often. But this is definitely something that I'm absolutely proud of as well, as to say, is regardless of size of PMS as far as you know how much we're spending on marketing and how much for noise we're making, uh, we are all pretty much on that same preferred partnership scale uh with those with those key channels, which I think is really important for our customers.

Alex Husner 40:16

Yeah, you you guys look at the business really just in a holistic way, and it it it shows in everything that you've just said there. So it's it's cool to hear more about it. But I want to hear more about the Love Reynolds program. What is that all about?

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Oh, that's a lot of fun. Manuel take this one in. I was just speaking yesterday as a great example to uh Graham Walsh of Orlando Property Services. Uh he was actually customer number one or two back in 2008. Uh he likes to say he's known me since I was in diapers. Um show me show me a teenager in diapers, Graham. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

He he has known you since you were 11, and I don't think you're wearing diapers, actually.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

I was 15 and you were 11. The point is, he's someone who kind of speaks to what lift rentals is all about. He's someone who got started in property management when it was just that it was property management. I I'm gonna make sure that this home is um immaculate, and I'm gonna make sure that when the guests are here, they have the time of their lives, that they have everything that they need. Any issues are rectified. Um I'm gonna treat them like a million bucks. Uh, but I don't do bookings, I'm not an online person. I don't know how to, you know, instantly respond to inquiries and beautify my listings in the way that I need to to keep up with the algorithms. I'm property manager. New property managers coming into the business, they are kind of prepared to be all of those things. Some of them still need a little bit more help and a little bit more education, which we can provide as well. But for those property managers who just want to focus on what they do really well, which is owner acquisition, owner maintenance, and managing the actual physical property. What we do with Love Rentals is we actually kind of use the PMS on your behalf. Um, we've spent the last eight years building a guest-facing brand that we go to market with on the major uh OTAs for our clients. So they get to benefit from our superhost status that we've we've worked so hard on, our premier host status. Um and what we do is essentially merchandise the listenings, make sure that they're using all the right promos, make sure that they're using all of the right uh settings and configurations so that your um, you know, your intention as far as like cancellation policies and uh arrival uh windows and things like that are respected, but that you get the most out of every gap in the calendar. Um so we do human revenue management, human guest support, human uh active inbox monitoring and phone answering uh for those property managers who just don't have the budget, bandwidth, or expertise to do all of those things and scale. And I think the best part of it all is that um we don't charge a fee for that. It's supported by a guest fee uh that's blended with the rate at checkout. So the property manager gets the exact payout that they expect, but we create additional value in the listing through all of the optimization and revenue management that we do such that that guest fee can be maintained and passed through so that we're not charging you a bill at the end. Um and that's growing rapidly. It's very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

We started that in Orlando about six or seven years ago, um, and it started to do really quite well there. And then we pushed uh into the panhandle and other areas of Florida, and then we uh pushed out into the mountain areas and out in California and across the United States, a bit of Mexico, and we realized uh and then Hawaii, and we realized this product actually could have international wings. Um so I just spent the last uh 60 days in Tokyo setting up um a physical office there uh for Love Rentals, uh, and we bought on the first about half a dozen units um in Tokyo for the Love Rentals program because the hosts in Tokyo and Japan are exactly the same situation. These uh some they have the best cleaners, the best guest services, they welcomed the guests with the most utmost Japanese hospitality, and we're so proud to be able to market their units. But what they've not Been able to do is attract the Western guest, which is the vast majority of guests now who traveled specifically to Tokyo, where we're starting. So we're taking our proven recipe of a North American, Western European, Latin American guest, and for the first time giving them the multi-spread ability to book high-end uh inventory in Japan, whereas before uh the inventory that uh people were booking were hosted remotely by Western hosts. Um so now we're taking the ability of a good property manager on the ground, giving them our technology and our access to our guests. So it's it's interesting how that concept uh we thought would just be an Orlando concept is now spreading to basically property managers and hosts who do an amazing job of managing the home, but their forte is not in marketing. That's where we come in uh and we utilize the systems we've built and the team we've built to help them fill their calendars with the best guests, not just from their domestic market, but but from around the world.

Sponsor Spotlight: Monarch Collective

SPEAKER_02 45:02

My name is Miller Hawkins. I'm the president and broker in charge of Boo Realty, as well as the Atlantic Resort Group. Both are under the Monarch Collective umbrella. I was asked several years ago while I was on the VRMA board of what my exit strategy is. Kind of hit me of, you know, I'm approaching 60 years old at the time and I'm not ready to retire now, but at some point I've got to have an exit strategy. I was introduced to the Monarch Collective a little over three years ago. I did not want to sell and give them the keys and leave. I wanted to stay on board for three, four, five years. And that's what their MO is. They don't want to buy a company from somebody and automatically go in and assume operations. They basically said from the get-go that when we do partner with a company, we work with you and support you in your current role as president to uh make life easier for you. We will support you and work alongside of you until the day comes when you do decide to leave. Before acquisition to after acquisition, as far as the brand, nothing

How LoveRentals helps property managers expand their capabilities

SPEAKER_02 46:03

has changed at all. The only thing they've done is support it. They brought in the resources, what they brought in, the support team, everything on the back end marketing, revenue management, financial, accounting, everything. They want to free up our time so we can grow our company, run our company like we've done without the burden of all the back office things. We have grown a number of owners. We have grown financially. The loyalty and the attitude with our owners, the attitude with our guests, the attitudes with our employees has done nothing but go up. The advice I would give to a vacation rental owner who is remotely thinking about selling their business in the next five years. Don't wait until that time to start the conversation with the Monarch Collective. Reach out to them now. They have an acquisitions team that will fly to your location, they will meet with you, they will get to know your business. I strongly suggest you reach out to the Monarch Collective now. The best business decision I ever made was to buy Bu Realty back in 95. The second best decision I have ever made was to partner with the Monarch Collective the way we did.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

If you're curious about what the next chapter for your vacation rental business could look like, Monarch Collective offers a free, no pressure conversation to help you explore your options. No strings attached, just a straight conversation with people who deeply understand this industry. Visit gomonarch.com slash partnerships to learn more.

Annie Holcombe 47:29

I was looking at some stats yesterday about the makeup of like the small hosts and what percentage of the listings that is for Airbnb. And that's just people like one unit. Like it's 30% of their listings is in that kind of. I think it's a little more than 30%, but it's there's there's these people that they want to do more, but they just they they just don't have the bandwidth or the knowledge or whatever. And I was joking yesterday, I I um learned about a very large um African country that has a very large um vacation rental market, Ghana. No idea that that existed. I looked it up. They actually have lots of properties, thousands of listings there. Um, but I think that that's you know, there's there's just this this concept of vacation rentals being isolated to very specific regions is uh it's no longer a thing. I mean, it's it's global in nature, but these people, you know, these people absolutely need help. But off the wall question for you, Vinny, because I know you were learning Japanese. How do you say I love rentals in Japanese? I'm gonna put you put you on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Probably Watsashiwa rental love. Um, my Japanese is terrible. Uh they they wouldn't use the word, they wouldn't use love rentals in Japan. We it's actually quite funny. I'm saying this on camera. In in Japan, we don't use the term love rentals to market the homes. We use Guide Sea Urge and another brand. Um, because in Japan a love hotel is a is a very, very different kind of rental altogether. Oh, it might be okay. I can see where the thing I'm saying. You'll Google love hotels, but uh yeah.

Annie Holcombe 49:00

I'm not gonna Google it, it'll mess up my own.

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Our first host in Japan, uh, a mentor of mine. If you go on Instagram, you see her online with me, uh Noda Kayori Sun. She uh told me straight up the Japanese are usually very, very polite. Uh, they don't usually speak in such direct terms. Uh, she said, There is no way we are going to market in Japan under the name Love Rentals. And I said, Why not? And she goes, Love hotels. I said, Ah, yes. So in Japan, we go under the brand Guide to Urge, um, which is far more appropriate for that market. But these are the nuances in markets that you have to that you have to know, right? Because had we advertised in Japan as Love Rentals, I think we'd have had the local police knocking on all of our vacation home doors very quickly, asking what kind of asking what kind of love was gonna be.

Annie Holcombe 49:52

Oh my gosh, yeah, you would have been definitely looked at when you came back in the US, your passport would have been taken from you.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but that's quite funny. But notice my Japanese, by the way, is awful. Um, I've spent two years learning the language, and I can order food quite well, I can order a taxi quite well, and that's really about it. It is by far the most beautifully complex language. And I mean, I speak Greek and Italian fluently. I read and write Greek and Italian, no problem. Even Greek is super simple compared to Japanese. Uh, anyone who can do it who is not of native Japanese origin, call me, let me know how you did it. Please give me feedback because yeah, it's it's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

And real quick, just to give the domestic audience a flavor of how we take that kind of local tuned approach here at home. Um, our home market, uh, we're based uh just outside of the Disney area in Orlando. So uh over half of our clients are are local to us, and we know we go visit them and have those great relationships. Um but being local, one of the things that we've really learned over the years is how to get guests from non-traditional marketplaces into our customers' homes. Um, so it's kind of like what Vinny was saying in in Japan, you know, Western guests are booking on Airbnb, Virgo, Booking.com are not really on um the property managers are not really on those sites in Japan. Um, what we've found a lot of success with for our Orlando-based clients is bringing in uh our exclusive relationships with wholesale distributors. Um Vinny, I think it would be good for you to maybe kind of mention that and how that sets off a bit.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Yeah, this is actually what set me off once in my international trekking years ago uh was I realized that a vacation home in Orlando was only ever really filled by about 50% domestic guests uh here from the United States. The rest of those guests were coming from the UK, Brazil, Colombia, France, all of these places in the world that weren't domestic. And on top of that, they weren't booking on booking.com or Verbo or Airbnb. They were booking with these wholesalers and these tour operators. So about seven or eight years ago, uh, before uh my CEO role, my my kind of role of as business development was I realized that Airbnb, Verbo Booking.com were eating for Orlando half of that calendar, and the other half of the calendar was coming from all these interesting places. So we went out and we built partnerships, and I'm proud to say, with uh Virgin Atlantic, Ocean Holidays, uh US Air Tours, uh, Tropical Escapes holidays, and probably another dozen, uh two dozen companies that put, and I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of millions of dollars a year in reservations into our customers' homes that would never have come from Airbnb, Verbo, and Booking.com. So people like to say, you know, well, what differentiate differentiates your PMS? Uh, if you're the right customer for us in the right market, we will actually fill your home with guests from around the world. And these guests book nine months in advance, 12 months in advance. They don't argue about the price, uh, they don't mess up your home, they give a lot of respect for the home. Uh, we truly do bring an international audience of guests from Brazil, uh, a whole bunch of wholesalers from Brazil that come down, who are now representing 13% of the guests coming to Florida. This is where we go to find our customers' business. It's not just about providing a piece of software, it's about providing an engine that's gonna provide them the demand for their houses and keep them current and competitive with all of their customers who who aren't using RPMS.

Alex Husner 53:31

Yeah, I mean, Orlando definitely is a different business climate there. And the more that I've learned about that market over the years, it's like it's it's it's so untraditional in so many ways. And you've got to be able to have uh, you know, people like you guys. It makes sense that you really focused on that area and understood it was just a different way to go to market for these companies. But we've talked a good amount this year about travel agents, just kind of in general. And a lot of them or those conversations, I think, have been more on like the luxury side of travel agents really wanting to be able to book vacation rentals and and know that they're sending their clients that they've worked with for years to really, you know, trusted, nice places. But do you guys do anything with travel agents or do are you looking at those as kind of like similar to a wholesale arrangement?

SPEAKER_00 54:14

No, we uh we absolutely are. So um we partnered up with the um US embassy down in Sao Paulo, uh, the Consul General, and we uh marketed basically our customers' vacation homes to 80 different travel agents down in Brazil who already booking Orlando, but they're booking hotels. And we were able to provide login portals for these travel agents to book Cyrus-based customers' homes directly with those property managers, opening up for many of these travel agents for the first time the ability to actually go ahead and book homes. Uh, we've done the same in London for the last five years with World Travel Market, uh, where we take a conglomerate of a few thousand of our customers' homes, put them

Finding vacation rental demand beyond the major OTAs

SPEAKER_00 54:59

in portals, and hand them out to travel agents and tour operators globally as well. One of the biggest features of Cyrus that no one ever speaks about is our travel agent technology, uh technology that allows our customers or us on behalf of our customers to build login portals for travel agents globally. It allows them to dynamically manage their pricing, their product, languages, and absolutely everything to essentially go and market their business, or sometimes we, on behalf of our customers, market their businesses for them to these travel agents. So it's a huge part of our strategy uh to fill that extra 30% of the calendar that gets overlooked.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

And the upshot there is tangible as well. I just put some statistics behind it. Uh, we we're we we love using Wheelhouse, uh, they're our preferred partner for revenue management. Kind of looking at some of their market reports, a couple of metrics that I think our customers can be really proud of. Um, average length of stay in the Orlando market, according to Wheelhouse, 5.1 days. That sounds about right. Our clients on these programs are at 9.4 days, 84% up, average length of stay. Occupancy, they're up 63% versus 43%. That's almost a 50% list. Red car, about the same, 45% up, revenue per unit, about 90% up uh over the year to date. So it just goes to show that it's such a bigger play than just let me get on Airbnb and put up a direct booking site and come what may. Um, you've got to look around the world. There are guests coming from all over the place. You just gotta know where to find them. That's what we really try to help do is look at every client and say, these are the marketplaces you need to be showing up in because there are guests very eager to book that home.

Annie Holcombe 56:35

Yeah, I think uh there's been a lot of talk um specifically in the luxury market with like the travel planners, and there's there's more travel advisors and travel planners. I mean, they're travel agents at the end of the day, but you know, it sounds sexier when you're an advisor or a planner. Um, but that's something that I know like when the luxury market is talked about a lot, but I think it it gets lost for the average property manager to understand how to access that. And you know, you go to him and talk to him about GDS, and it's like, wait a minute, this is that's that's like the something I can't understand. So I think that that's it's definitely a unique feature of Cyrus. And I think you've always done a really good job at that. But hopefully people listening to this will understand that, you know, now we're trying to help you get that out there further because um, you know, we need to help you scream it from the rooftops because the stuff that you guys have done for your partners has been it has been incredible. I mean, I I've always been impressed with what you guys have done. And I I love the fact that you're not always screaming shiny new penny over here. You know, you're just it's just slow and steady wins the race to your point, Vinny. It's you know, it's the the hair and the tortoise. But you know, maybe sometimes the tortoise has to take a nap and and figure things out. But you know, you guys have done all the right things and it's so impressive to watch and just so proud to know you guys. I mean, I feel like I just adore you and and um have watched you grow up in this business. And so I'm not trying to age myself, but you know, I I was I was I was already working kind of in the hospitality industry

Reaching guests through travel agents, wholesalers, and international markets

Annie Holcombe 57:55

when you took your first vacation to the US, Josh. So it's it's been a while, but you're doing great things and and we're proud to know you and so grateful that you came on the show to talk about all of this. And we'll look forward to seeing you at the shows. We will be at VRMA and um Alex and I will be part of the VRMA podcast uh booth that's set up, but then we will all be roving reporters and going to booths and going around the conference to talk to people. So look forward to maybe um getting a sneak peek when you do your introduction of this new these new tools at the show.

SPEAKER_00 58:28

Absolutely. Yeah, well, there'll be about five of us uh Verma. Uh I'm coming as well, which is exciting because I haven't been to uh a Verma. Personally, I haven't been to a Verma event in a couple years. Uh so I'm personally excited to go. Uh, but yeah, there'll be five or six of us there. Um looking forward to seeing you guys. And yeah, Josh has got to show you the uh the new mobile uh version of the platform and the new owner systems. They really are a game changer. To your point, if we if we screamed about our products more, uh, we would probably show more people how good they are. But they truly um it truly is a game changer for our customers who'll be able to run their full business, their entire full PMS business remotely properly for the first time and not in a clunky environment. So super excited to see that.

Alex Husner 59:12

There's a big difference there, too, because a lot of software say, Yes, we have a mobile app, but is it user-friendly? In a lot of cases, it's not. It's actually terrible. So it's like it you're sometimes better just to go in your browser and pull it up like you're on desktop than to already use the mobile app. You're so right.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

And that was what we faced for many years was our full web app was excellent. But when you brought it down into a into a mobile, it it said it'd do everything, but it was clunky. And now what what Josh's team have built, it's really smooth.

Alex Husner 59:44

It has to be very easy to use because I mean, if you're trying to get your maintenance teams, your housekeeping teams, your field field ops, they can't have something that they're having to figure out how to use it. I mean, they're moving really quickly between jobs, so ease of use is huge, you know, and really expected these days. So very excited to see that. We will definitely come by the booth and and hang out with you guys. It's gonna be fun in Nashville.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Yeah, definitely. And I just want to say, um, from all of us at Cyrus, thank you guys so much for being such great partners and advocates. Um, we really return the compliments and and full. It's a joy to uh get to know you guys and to be a part of this.

Alex Husner 1:00:21

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Uh I couldn't do this without partners like you guys, you know. I mean, it's our our job is to sit here and let you tell the story and us to get to ask questions and learn about it. And I think it it works good. But this was fun today. We will continue in Nashville. If anybody wants to get in touch with you guys, wants to see it ahead of the show, what's the best way for them to reach out?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

We're gonna keep it super, super, super simple. You can just go to Cyrus.com. That's C-I-I-R-U-S, as we've been talking about. We are a small team. Uh, one of my colleagues, Wesley and I, we handle all of our demos personally. So if you wanted to speak to me personally or Vinnie personally, uh, we're all here for you guys. Just drop a note when you fill out the uh the meeting requests. Let us know that you heard about us through the podcast. Uh, we can even extend uh a nice offer to you uh a nice promotion that Alex and Annie have been kind enough to help us roll out here, which is a uh a three-month fee waiver. So when you join us, you won't owe your subscription payments for the first three months. They'll be completely waived, which is uh a nice barrier of entry removed from a software switch, which we know is challenging enough in and of itself. Uh, we're here to help with that.

Alex Husner 1:01:28

That's a great offer too. I mean, normally most companies will do like a month, but three months is uh pretty good, especially heading into the off season, too. So that's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:37

We always like to we always like to offer if you ever have any questions about uh how we do distribution differently, how we access these international markets of guests that uh don't just come from our domestic channels, even if you're not looking to switch software, even if you're not looking to buy anything, call us, uh, send me an email. Uh I love talking about this stuff. I literally spend uh all of my spare time talking with property managers, whether they're customers or not, about how to diversify their distribution above and beyond uh just the the main channel. So always happy just to have a chat, even if you're not looking to uh buy software and you just want to talk about how you in your business can expand your distribution. Uh it takes a village to do these things and it takes lots of

What is next for the Ciirus platform

SPEAKER_00 1:02:24

conversations. Absolutely. Awesome.

Alex Husner 1:02:26

Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandanipodcast.com. And until next time, thanks everybody.