From Rocks to Remarkable: The Making of Destin Dreamers, with Arlen Busenitz

Alex Husner: 00:02
Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of Vacation Rentals. With more than 35 years combined industry experience, Alex User and Annie Holcomb have teamed up to connect the dots between inspiration and opportunity, seeking to find the one story, idea, strategy, or decision that led to their guests' Big Aha Moment. Join them as they highlight the real stories behind the people and brands that have built Vacation Rentals into the $100 billion industry it is today. And now, it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, Alex and Annie. Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real woman of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we have Arlen Buznitz, who is the CEO of Destined Dreamers. Arlen, it's so good to see you again.

Arlen Buseniz: 00:48
Thank you. It's great to be out here. I wish I was on the beach, but second best is hanging out with you guys.

Annie Holcombe: 00:53
We appreciate that. And Ash, I don't know, today's a good beach day in the panhandle. It was uh 32 degrees when I woke up this morning. So not a great day to go to the beach. A little cold for this time of year. But Arlen, before we get started, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you came to Destin Dreamers?

Arlen Buseniz: 01:10
Yeah, so I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and this was a real farm where you get up, you tour the hogs, the cattle, go to school, come back, work hard, and it prepped me for the vacation rental industry. Arlen, how do you stay so calm? I'm used to animals getting out. I'm used to having to go work no matter how you feel. Yeah. That upbringing was incredible for that. And then I bumped into a problem when I was 18. And that is I needed money to pay for college. So I took my dad's 1976 yellow Jeep pickup, went out to the Flint Hills of Kansas, loaded it full of rocks, brought it into the farmer's market, and I unloaded the rocks and I waited for people to stop and buy. And people did stop and laugh. You're selling rocks. Who sells rocks? But I finally made my first sale a couple hours in, and later on I went home with a smile on my face and $40 in my pocket. So I came back the next three or four weeks, and I'm selling rocks. Then I decided to count my profits. So I'm standing beside the Jeep counting 100, 200, 300 pennies.

Annie Holcombe: 02:40
Oh god. Wow. These are good margins, Arlen.

Arlen Buseniz: 02:45
Did you have thought about quitting?Y I sure did. Yeah. But instead, I pivoted, I started bringing bigger rocks, and I sold rocks for two years and made enough money to pay for my first car, two years of college, and 13 visits to the chiropractor.

Alex Husner: 03:06
That's awesome.

Annie Holcombe: 03:07
I didn't know people would buy rocks.

Alex Husner: 03:09
Yeah, both of those stories we have not yet heard. And the ones come on the show and either talk about the farm side, really, or and certainly not rocks. So that's interesting. And how did you get down from to Destin from Kansas?

Arlen Buseniz: 03:22
Well, before we get to that, one thing I learned from that rock experience is my philosophy of life. And that is you build relationships and deliver value. And if you do that, you're going to be successful in business. And if we're not successful, if something's lacking, it's because we're not building good relationships or we're not delivering good value. Or there could be a third one, we're not charging for the value that we're delivering. So I came out here in 2019 with a family to work for a defense contractor. And during that time, I had a couple cool experiences. I wrote a proposal that NASA accepted, and our team went out, and NASA shot something up in the sky. It came back down, and our team had to go out, dive underwater, and recover this object.

Alex Husner: 04:14
Oh my god.

Arlen Buseniz: 04:16
Part of that, I was told, Arlen, you can be the underwater photographer on this if you overcome your fear of water and become an underwater diver. So back in 2019, I overcame my fear of water and got the certification. So I was able to do that project for NASA through the defense contractor. And a few months after coming out here to Florida in 2019, got laid off from that job. And I had this thing where I start random conversations at coffee shops. And I start a conversation with a friend of Chris, who's the owner of Destin Dreamers. And I ended up joining on Destined Dreamers when we had eight properties as one of the first employees. And now we're up to about 60.

Alex Husner: 04:58
Wow.

Arlen Buseniz: 04:58
And our focus is the luxury space. So most of them are seven, eight, nine, ten, even up to 12 bedroom properties here in Destin, Florida.

Annie Holcombe: 05:07
Yeah. Nice. So we've come a long way since rocks. Yeah.

unknown: 05:10
Rocks.

Annie Holcombe: 05:11
I have a question about the rock. So what was the what was the angle of selling a rock? Is it you need it for landscaping, or is it just you had to find out what their need was to be able to give them the right rock? I've never seen anybody sell a rock before, so I'm curious.

Arlen Buseniz: 05:27
This is what I learned. People do not buy rocks. People buy something to make their house look beautiful. People buy lawn protection to put rocks besides their driveways. People buy a rock to support a young man who's trying to pay for college. And that same principle is people don't buy a stay, they're buying an experience with their family.

Alex Husner: 05:56
Wow. That's powerful. Yeah, that lifts it all together now.

Annie Holcombe: 06:01
Like the whole cut rock thing has a whole different meaning to me now.

Arlen Buseniz: 06:04
Those rocks were anywhere from five pounds up to, I think the biggest rock I sold was a 500-pound rock. Oh. And the and this is business 101. You have a product you have to deliver, and then you have to evolve the business to deliver it. And at first, when I was selling and not making any money, I'm selling these 10, 20, 30 pound rocks. But the customer said, We want big rocks, we want them delivered to our houses. And I said, Show me the money. And the principle in business is this our customers, our clients, which in vacation rentals, we have two clients. You have the guest and you have the owner. They are communicating, they are shouting what they want. It may sound like a whisper to us, but they are shouting what they want. We just have to figure out what that is and deliver it. In my case, if they wanted a rock delivered in their backyard, how would I make that happen? So I went out and I bought a dolly that could hold a 600-pound rock. And I had these straps, I'd put it on there and then wheel it to the back, which the 600-pound rock I had help. But anything under 300 pounds, I could do myself. And the first time I went to deliver a big rock, as I pulled it off the pickup, it hit the yard and left a dent. Well, life is a series of problems that need to be solved. To solve that problem, I got a whole piece of carpet. In the future, every rock rolled onto that carpet.

Alex Husner: 07:38
Trial by error.

Arlen Buseniz: 07:41
It's all about problems. It's just a series of problems to be solved or to be accepted because some problems you can't solve. Don't complain about it. Just accept that that's a problem. You can't solve it. Live with it.

Annie Holcombe: 07:53
So we're gonna walk away from this episode with Arlenisms. Yeah, I know.

Alex Husner: 08:00
Oh wow, there's there's a lot to unpack there. But I mean, I'm with you 100%. And you know, we always say the same thing too. It's like, you know, we're all very blessed now in the line of work that we do that we're we're selling something that it's you know, making memories for vacations and it's a fun thing. And you know, there's problems, but for the most part, like this is a it's a fun business and a fun product to market. But um, it really at the end of the day, you know, people enjoy selling things that are not interesting whatsoever. We always talk about, like, you know, we're at least we don't have to sell insurance, but I'm sure people that sell insurance, they love it too, because you're solving somebody's problem, it means a lot to that person at that time. So it's like, you know, you just have to have the right perspective of what is your internal mission and what makes you happy and how you're gonna be able to connect with people and solve problems. So, you know, that that makes any business can take any business from complexity to simple, really quick.

Arlen Buseniz: 08:53
And the simpler the business is, the easier it is to scale. And I'm reading a really good book right now called The Science of Scaling. In fact, that's a book I'll probably read through about three times in the next six weeks. Um, I used to read a ton of books every year, 20, 30, 40, 50 books a year. I've now dialed that back to where I will find a good book and read it again and again and actually apply what it teaches. But that's one of the principles is simple. Simple, simple, simple.

Alex Husner: 09:22
Yeah. And there's nothing simple about this business. So how do how have you approached scaling? Let's just jump into it. I mean, you guys have built a really nice portfolio there, but how do you take some of those lessons from what you know and what you're reading in that book and apply that to our industry?

Arlen Buseniz: 09:40
When it comes to simple, it's a complex industry, but yet at the core, it's a very simple industry. So it's very simple, is you clean the house, you make sure everything is working and safe, and the guest checks in. If they have a problem, you respond, you take care of it. It's if you break it down, all the little pieces are simple. When you start there, you create the systems to put good different people in place, and then the product coming out is amazing. Now, I wish I could say that we got every problem solved, that every customer is 100% happy. But that's part of the challenge. If this industry was easy, there'd be even more competition than what there is now. And the key to dealing with competition and the key to deal with now the industry is flooded with people seeking to manage homes. You have more supply than demand presently in some areas, is you just remember this cream rises to the top. Be the cream.

Annie Holcombe: 10:47
That's 100% true. 100% true. And in this market, in this market, I think um you're dealing with luxury properties, like you said, and there's a that that's a whole another level of complexity because the personalities behind some of these luxury owners are very demanding. So, how did you how did you come from Midwestern stock to deal with like the panhandle? It's a it's a it's a crazy market.

Arlen Buseniz: 11:13
It is well, like uh give you a little more backstory. So back in Kansas after college, I pastored a church out there for 15 years and it was a mega church, meaning even though it only had 60 people, it was in a town of 200. Is that not a mega church?

Annie Holcombe: 11:28
Oh, that I mean for the yeah, for that church, yeah, absolutely.

Alex Husner: 11:31
Yeah, obviously drew a crowd.

Annie Holcombe: 11:33
It's a great way to look at it though.

Arlen Buseniz: 11:35
So I have a dry humor. As part of that, I was also in the volunteer EMS fire department in the town, and I taught in the community college to just help support the family. So it was unique because I was on call all the time to I could be opening gifts with my family, and then 30 minutes later be doing CPR on a cancer patient who did not make it, and then I put on my chaplain hat. I'm there with the now widow for two hours while the detective comes out, the hearse comes out, the mortician. And people ask me, Arlen, how do you stay chill in this industry? I'm not doing CPR on someone. It's an AC that's out. It resets everything you're doing. And and that's where one of the keys in business and in this industry is to stay composed. There was a case back in Kansas where a small town uh they're having a baseball game. Runner slides into second base, obviously injured. All eyes turned to Ed. Ed is the highest medical professional in the county. Ed slowly walks out to second base. And he told me later he was communicating to everyone that I got this, that things are under control. If he had ran out there, people would have started freaking out that this is a really bad thing. The fact that he slowly walked out there communicated things would be okay. And in the same way, you have a guest who's upset, a team member who's upset, an owner who's upset. When we approach this from a composed standpoint, a composed caring angle, it brings the stress level down.

Alex Husner: 13:24
Yeah, so true. Yeah, it's so true. I I love how you just phrase that too. I mean, I I've been in so many situations where it's a busy Saturday, and you know, you've got a guest upset in the lobby and they're screaming and yelling, and then you know, the other staff that's trying to help them, they're running around in the background trying to figure out what we're gonna do. And it's like it really does come down to just having your own like uh understanding of you have to have that composure. And and when you come into a situation with composure, it shows confidence that and you have to have empathy, but like that you're gonna you're gonna figure this out, you're gonna help them figure it out. And that's that's really great takeaway for anybody listening right now, I would say. It's one of the things you know, like you just don't, you know, sometimes it's really hard to forget the things that you've learned.

Arlen Buseniz: 14:09
And you brought up a really good point there, is just bring up the fact that we're all on the same team. That upset guests because the AC is out. We're on the same team to get this fixed. The owner where maybe the revenue's down a little bit, or they just had this massive bill from an AC going out. Hey, this is Florida ACs have lots of issues. You know, we're on the same team, we're a partner here to get this fixed.

Alex Husner: 14:35
Yeah.

Arlen Buseniz: 14:35
And you asked about how we made it out here. There's there's a principle in life is life is full of seasons or chapters. And in every season, we need to be thinking through, praying through when is this season going to be over? And we left the church on a good note. We came out here to Florida for six weeks because we always wanted to travel out here. Uh I was teaching online. And that's where I met the defense contractor, transitioned into nine months of cool experiences, and then went through the layoff, and now with Dustin Dreamers and married with five kids.

Annie Holcombe: 15:06
Five kids. Oh my goodness. I was gonna say, how do you have time for any kids? Oh my goodness. You've done everything. Oh, I don't there's so many questions I have. I don't even know where to start. You don't take rejection, you want to like get things done, you you you want to find a solution. So that's that absolutely is applicable with this business. Um, you stay calm under pressure. Um, you understand that it's teamwork that's really important. What other I'm gonna just say this, what other Arlenisms do we have that we can apply from your other experiences to vacation rentals?

Arlen Buseniz: 15:43
When it comes to life, life is hard. And we have it very easy in America, but but life is difficult. And I say easy compared to most of the world. And you know, something Jesus said 2,000 years ago, he said, Look, you will have trouble. And I I just read in this year a couple of weeks ago that the statement, life is difficult, and when you accept that, it becomes easy. And I won't modify that to my Arlenism. Life is a series of problems to be solved or accepted. And that accepted is what I add to that because uh it's either if it's a problem, change it. If you can't change it, it's a fact of life. Just learn to accept it. Too many people spend time complaining. Look, either change it or accept it. It does not work to complain, it just puts you in a rough mental state. And I think speaking of mental states, a person can live and operate from a state of fear, a state of I can't change this, or helplessness, or victimhood, or operate from the state that every problem has a solution, even though that solution may just need to make you accept the problem. And then a concept I teach my kids, my daughter's a cross-country runner, is the next mailbox. You run to the next mailbox. And on Saturday, when you're thinking there's 50 check-ins happening, you have all this possible chaos, it really comes down to it's the next inspection, the next email, the next phone call. All your day looking at the big thing, but then you just bring it down to the next mailbox, next email, next owner call, next, next, and that makes it bite-sized. And then a good principle too is the 90-10 secret. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond. There's a lot we cannot control, but we can always control our attitude. If we have the view that I am in control of the 90%, that gives power. And I can go out and realize I can't control this, but I can control there. And the AC is down. I could not control that, but I can control how fast I get an AC vendor out there. I can control how my team communicates with the guest, and that brings empowerment.

Alex Husner: 18:17
Wow. Yeah, I agree completely. Very inspired here. Yeah, very inspired. And you know, we we love talking about stuff like this. And I think we have guests on the show quite often that want to talk more about, you know, just mindset. And it really doesn't matter what industry you're in, whether in short-term rentals or insurance, you know, I mean literally anything. Um, but the the mindset component is so important, no matter what your career is, or even if you don't have a career, I mean, just how you approach life. And I think that's one thing that's, you know, a lot of these conferences is kind of missing. Some of them have, you know, more towards those types of themes, but it's really important to boil it down at the end of the day of you're right. It's a simple business. I mean, we're trying to check guests in, we're trying to check them out, keep the house clean, get owners, you know, and market more to guests. And it's just, it's a cycle. But you know, we live in a world that really technology has made it very complicated. That's some of the things that are supposed to make this industry easier have actually made it more complicated in a lot of cases.

Arlen Buseniz: 19:14
Yeah, that's a good point. And I have a simple framework here that kind of helps through all this too, if you'd like to hear it.

Alex Husner: 19:20
Yeah, I would love to.

Arlen Buseniz: 19:21
So I call it the PHR framework. And this solves the problem of issues that pop up. So the P stands for prevent. This is why we have checklists. When a guest checks out, we have maintenance running through their checklist. We have the cleaners running through their checklist, we have the post clean running through their checklist. So that prevents a lot of problems. Now, if the fridge has just gone out and we can't get that fixed before the next guest checks in and we have to get a rental fridge in there, then we go to the H, which is the heads up. If a guest checks in and the fridge is down and they see there's one in the garage, they're not very happy. But if we Call them ahead of time and say, Hey, um, the main fridge is down, but we were able to get you a bigger one out there in the garage. Hey, sorry about that. We'll get this one going. That at least minimizes the stress. And then the R stands for in the PHR is be responsive. Is when an issue goes down, when an issue happens, be responsive. Another framework, teach the team is I call it the eight DAC formula, which is when someone reaches out with an issue, you acknowledge that. You dispatch, and then you alert the guest what time the tech will be there. And then the final one, C, is confirm with the guests it's been taken care of. And that right there will prevent many chargebacks. When you reach out and use this terminology, terminology is does this fully resolve the issue?

Alex Husner: 20:52
Oh, yeah.

Arlen Buseniz: 20:53
Fully resolve the issue. So down the road, if you get a chargeback over that, you can show them, hey, credit card company, we messaged the guest, and the guest said this fully resolved the issue.

Alex Husner: 21:04
Yeah.

Arlen Buseniz: 21:04
With Airbnb, if you can get issues resolved within 24 hours, it's a huge advantage. They are very quick to give back a third of the night that the issue was there. So if you can at least minimize that to 24 hours and then show them you're taking care of the guests, you're doing everything you can, then that definitely helps.

Alex Husner: 21:22
Is that an issue at one point did you guys deal with chargebacks?

Arlen Buseniz: 21:26
We have a few that come in every year. And there was some fraudulent activity happening with people with steal credit cards and then you know they'd trying them last-minute booking. Once us and other companies caught on to that, you know, you do extra screening with those who book last minute. Uh I'm not sure if any company's done this yet, but the sheriff told us if you know it's a stolen card and they're checking in, just call us upon checking, they'll go out and arrest the people.

Alex Husner: 21:57
Oh, oh wow, interesting.

Arlen Buseniz: 21:59
So there's property managers just itching to do that.

Annie Holcombe: 22:02
Yeah, the the Walton County Sheriff's great. They're so helpful. And think you have a really good sheriff over there.

Arlen Buseniz: 22:07
They have been, especially during spring break. If you have issues, they're just minutes away.

Annie Holcombe: 22:11
Yeah, they're they're on they're Johnny on the spot for that. That's for sure.

Arlen Buseniz: 22:16
Yeah. The and you know, simplicity is you you mentioned it really well, Alex. There is so much program, system, software out there. And I feel for a new one coming to this new person coming to this industry because everyone says they have the best. And what's interesting when it comes to property management softwares, I will talk to a friend who's leaving a company, company A to go to company B, and I talk to another friend who's leaving company B to go to company C, and then another friend who's leaving company C to go to company A. And as long as you're sticking with one of the top systems out there, there's gonna be pluses and minuses to it. And it's too easy to jump around from one to the next. But it comes back to it, it's all about build relationships, deliver value.

Annie Holcombe: 23:05
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you've you've clearly done that. So you said you started out with just a few properties and you said you're at 60 now.

Arlen Buseniz: 23:12
Yes, just a town under 60.

Annie Holcombe: 23:15
60 is a 60 is a good, a good amount, manageable, but obviously given the the coastal um spread of properties, I imagine on a on a turn day, that's still challenging, or do you have them all relatively close to to to close together for your team?

Arlen Buseniz: 23:30
We have 80% within 15 minutes of our office, then we have another 20% that are spread out just a bit. You know, we we run a hybrid where we have our own team, our own maintenance, but then we supplement that. We have cleaners who are 1099s, we have uh some maintenance that can come in and help as needed, because you know, you need a dishwasher repaired or replaced. There's teams, there's things your team can do, and then there's team things that it's better to get somebody else in to do. And it's like football. Do you guys like watching football?

Alex Husner: 24:04
Yeah.

Arlen Buseniz: 24:06
It's funny because in football, everyone has their special role. And I know when you're starting a business, it feels like you need to wear all these different hats. But quick as possible, realize this is what one person's good at, this is what the other person's good at. Keep people in their lanes, and everyone is happier.

Annie Holcombe: 24:24
Yeah, when you try to force people to learn all the things, then nobody is good at anything because they're just spread too thin.

Arlen Buseniz: 24:32
Yes, and there's always going to be a little bit of that cross-training uh where hey, sometimes maintenance has to go in and do a cleaning inspection. Uh, sometimes someone from accounting has to run out and do a cleaning inspection. But overall, yeah, keep people in their lanes. We use a test called the working genius. And that's a I think it's like 25 bucks, but that shows some people are really good at starting things. Some people are really good at energizing teams, some are really good at following checklists and finishing things up. When you have the entire team take that, you can make sure that you have the people who are good at starting, figuring things out, and then also the people who are not good at figuring things out, but they know how to make things get done.

Alex Husner: 25:16
Yeah, absolutely. We'll be back in just a minute. But first, a word from our premier brand sponsor.

Annie Holcombe: 25:21
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Alex Husner: 26:17
We're just talking about the different personality tests and how beneficial that can be to companies as they're growing. And we were having a conversation about, you know, what if you actually gave that to homeowners too, to understand before you got you doing an engagement with them, what it was that you were getting in to make sure that you are the right fit. But I'm curious how you take all this wisdom and dispel it into finding the right owners because I know you've grown very you know strategically and not trying to just get all the inventory and destined. You've picked owners and homes that really complement what you're looking for, which now this makes even more sense than what I knew before we hit play. But how have you to how have you applied that approach to owner relationships?

Arlen Buseniz: 26:58
There's a concept which I firmly believe, and that is you can have a great company and a great person, owner, team member, but they have to be the right fit. And we underestimate the power of fit within our teams, within our companies, and that has to do with customers, has to be clients, all that. So the the question then is how do you find the right fit? So when it comes to owners, you need to figure out what's a psyche, what's your ideal owner, and then stick close to that. And there's some owners where they will not put any money into their house. They are okay with some bad reviews because they only care about the underlying profits, which we all know over time actually go down if you don't take care of your house. So ideally, we're looking for an owner that sees us as partners, where we treat each other with respect. I am okay with an owner with high standards as long as they are realistic standards and they treat my team with respect. There is great freedom in this business the moment you have the freedom to let owners go or fire owners that are not the right fit for you. And it's as simple as hey, I man, I hate to say this, but we're just not the best fit for you. We're not we're not able to meet your expectations. Let's work on the exit plan to go elsewhere. And then your team, this sends a message to your team because an owner like that that it's time to move on from has probably been causing a lot of stress for your team.

Annie Holcombe: 28:34
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Becomes toxic.

Arlen Buseniz: 28:37
What I like to do when I'm interviewing owners, I ask them what did they dislike about the last company? And there was a made a mistake one time bringing on an owner, and I didn't find out till later, but they'd been to through several companies in the last couple years. If there's an owner that's jumping from company to company, really put your tons up on that one.

Alex Husner: 28:58
Yeah, there's a reason for that.

Arlen Buseniz: 28:60
We are just an amazing company, right? And when everyone finds us, we will solve all their problems. Not really. So I look for that. You you ask what are they unhappy with the last company? And just be listening. And if it's an owner that when they check in, if a knick-knack has been moved five inches, we're not the right company company for you. We go through and we put the houses back together after, but it's you there's other great companies out there. There's over 7,000 rentals here locally. There's great owners that will be a good fit for. And when someone's trying to grow, they're so focused on getting new owners that they forget what's worse than not getting an owner is getting an owner that's not a great fit.

Alex Husner: 29:47
Getting the wrong owner, yeah. Yeah. Especially when you're spending not only your team's time, but their mental capacity and sometimes anguish dealing with these owners if they're not a good fit, and then you've been marketing the property, and if they leave, I mean, there's there's it's it's it's tough. I mean, it's really important to ask those questions. And I I think um that makes a lot of sense to ask what was wrong and just be listening to to know if they're saying something, if it's about rates and you know what the market was this year, and they're saying they didn't think that they got enough for what they should have. You know, if you know that you're gonna do basically that same amount, like you need to dive in and ask, you know, how often did you use the property? I mean, are there ways that we can get to whatever that goal is? But it is a nice reverse psychology trick there. I like it.

Arlen Buseniz: 30:32
Yeah, and diving into that is asking the question, what's the top three things important to you? And then what's the three things that really bug you? Just asking people and build that owner profile, put that in the notes so your team knows the hot buttons to avoid and how to make them, how to build that collateral. Think of it, we have a jar full of pennies, and every time we do something and press the owner, it fills us up. Every time we do something that they don't like, it could be messing up on an owner statement. It could be uh, you know, they check in and they're really emphasized on you know the backyard being in perfect order and it's not quite in perfect order, just knowing what that is, but you're always trying to deposit in there and then minimize the subtractions. It's called the jar of trust.

Annie Holcombe: 31:28
I love that. There was a couple of sessions at Vera May this year. One of them, um, Dennis from Cassiola hosted. I wasn't in it, but I heard a lot of conversation about it. And one that I um actually made uh moderated later in the later in the in the conference um about owner retention and owner acquisition and stuff. But he was Dennis talked about the red flags that you know that exist with going after or getting owners, and like sometimes you just ignore the red flags. And I was um doing a kind of a blog post recently and had some conversations with people about I when I was in property management, I was in the Panama City Beach market when all the condos were coming up. And so it was like they were the buildings were just popping up all over the place. That was like in you know, 2025, you know, 2005, like just really early in the 2000s. And it was it was a a rush to get the inventory, and and we were all operating from this mindset of like we got to get it all, we got to get it at all costs. And so everybody was undercutting. And I think it goes back to like you said, the mindset, but it's like that mindset of like, you know, Alex and I talk about a lot on the show is that that abundance versus scarcity mindset. And when you operate in the scarcity mindset, you're operating off of bad choices and missing red flags and not really thinking about the greater picture, like how it affects your team and how ultimately it's gonna affect your bottom line, but you you operate in the abundance mindset and know that you know, to your earlier point about things are gonna work out the way they're supposed to work out, and that you don't, you know, you don't have to always have the solution, doesn't always have to be yes. It, you know, it can be, I just gotta deal with this and and move on and cut my losses. And I think that you're right, some people grow for the sake of growing and they're not thinking about the ramifications of their business and their staff and and ultimately that relationship with the owner. Like sometimes it's just not a good fit, and it's okay to say that. And people need to know that it's okay to say that.

Arlen Buseniz: 33:16
Very true. And I think when it comes to dealing with owners and guests, here are three foundational principles. This this is true for all life, but one is set expectations and meet them. There, there's a lot of people they'll set unrealistic expectations and come in here. Well, that's disappointment on happiness. Others set low expectations and then come in up here. Well, that's not good business because you missed out on every single one who would have gone with you if they knew you delivered up here. So set the expectations. Yeah, have a little bit of wow factor. Yes, we want to exceed expectations, but set them, meet them. That's an owner, that's a guest. And through the guest, that's through our listings, our photos, our descriptions. That's all setting those expectations. And with the owners is having those upfront conversations where in our area with our bigger homes, there's not much money coming in January, February. Yeah, you you set that. It's gonna be a little bit slower the first year. Set the expectations and then meet them. So that's one. Number two is be responsive. Our internal standard is six-minute response time when a guest message is in. So I have team members and virtual assistants who are monitoring from early morning to late at night, so we can have that. And that's without AI. We use some AI to build some responses, and we're testing some automatic responses. But essentially, I'm paying for people to be watching that line so they can give rapid response to be responsive, and then that also goes into hey, if there's an issue at the house, the pool's not heating like it's supposed to, or a storm just came through and the pool's dirty, we respond to there as quick as possible. And then uh when it comes to the third thing is have fun, be joyful, relax, good time. Yeah, we deal with some very wealthy owners and they appreciate how we can just be down to earth. You know, we can call and shoot the breeze on things. Uh, you know, a guest checks in. We can, if they're from Midwest, hey, we'll talk, Chiefs, Kansas. But just just have fun, relax. Those three things is set expectations, meet them, be responsive, and then just have fun.

Alex Husner: 35:42
Yeah, no, that's that's great words of wisdom. And my gosh, there's so much competition in your market. I think there's gotta be the most concentration of vacation rental companies anywhere in the country in the panhandle. So uh a lot of a lot of choices. But um so I mean, look looking at looking at this year, everybody kind of wants to know how how everybody's done, and especially as we move into 2026. I mean, what what are some takeaways from from this year as things have kind of continued to slow down? And and what are you maybe planning for or looking forward to do differently in 2026?

Arlen Buseniz: 36:16
So I'll steal a concept from real estate. And in real estate, there's not good or bad markets, there's just good or bad deals within the market. So if you want to take it to vacation rentals, there's no doubt we've kind of had a down market across the region. That's what the stats show. But the key is in a down market, how do you be that cream? How do you be good? And in our case, um, in July, about 80% of our homes had already exceeded last year's levels of existing homes of what was on the books. So, like a reservation September would have counted towards that total. So that means we're doing something right there.

Alex Husner: 36:58
Yeah, absolutely. That's great.

Arlen Buseniz: 36:60
As we move forward, we're gonna see more last-minute bookings that that's coming in. Uh, you're gonna see some people doesn't matter, they book further out. The competition is is fierce when it comes to, you know, um you have companies trying to undercut with low commissions, you have uh people wanting a good deal, uh trying to negotiate down that way, which that's that's what happens in a in a market like this. I think it's something to remember when it comes to business, business is war. Business is war. And just realizing that when I wake up in the morning, I like to wake up at 5 30, when I go to bed at night, there are competitors who are thinking about how do we take Destin Dreamers owners? There's people fighting for our guests. And putting on your mindset that this is this is war. And as I go deeper to that, when someone has given us a property that's a $3 million property you manage that's going to be doing around $200,000. This is an asset that they're entrusting with us. We have such an incredible responsibility to make sure that's managed well. And it's not just a war against other people, it's because it's friendly competition out here, but it's it's a war about all these forces that are pushing down the profits on that house, whether it's repairs, um, economy ships, etc. So just there's that weight of how can I deliver a good product for that owner? But then also you have families who've saved all year. They come together, you got four families coming together and they come to stay out. You want them to have a great experience. And then the AC goes down or something happens. And we've even found cases where there's some conflict that's happening within the family. Well, they're gonna take it out on the management company at 10:30 night. I've seen a text message come in saying, Hey, we don't really like this house because there's no closet on the first floor for luggage, there's no bedroom on the first floor. And I told the team something was happening in that house at 10 30 at night that caused that to come up. And think about it, if you're the guester record, you spent, in our case, 10,000, 15,000, maybe more for a summer booking, and there's a lot of pressure on you with the right.

Alex Husner: 39:31
Definitely.

Arlen Buseniz: 39:32
So there's been times we've bought flowers for the guest record. You just just listen, calm, calm down, and provide a great experience. But it's essentially this mindset that it's it's war, it's there's enemies out there and not not just not people, but just there's all these forces that you have to navigate, you have to adapt, you have to go through this because the end goal. It's a great experience for the owner and a great experience for the guest and a great experience for our team members.

Annie Holcombe: 40:07
You've got such a great, great mindset. I'm sure your team is um appreciative of of how you are calm, it seems, through these situations. And you yeah, I'm I'm guessing this is part of the training that you you put them through to be able to handle things. Um I wanted to like pivot off of that and go back to you mentioned that you were starting to use AI, and that's been a big conversation that we've been having with people as to how to implement AI and when to implement it. And we are in a business, um, you know, as we talked about, it's a relationship business. And so where do you where do you insert this false person, this AI thing into the business so it doesn't remove the personal touch or that human touch of the business? So, how how are you navigating that for your business?

Arlen Buseniz: 40:54
Excellent question. So, this is what's can be happening in this industry is there's a guest issue, and let's say they want money back, they go to AI and they draft a response and send it to the vacation rental company. The very vacation rental company or person takes that response and puts it into AI. AI spits it out and sends it back. And then the guest takes and puts that into AI, spits it out. So what you really have is two AI AIs talking to each other. So you want to roll to the ideal. The ideal model is this where if a guest has an issue, like they need a Wi-Fi code, it's they shoot the message over, AI recognizes that and then shoots it back immediately. But then AI recognizes, hey, this is something deeper. We need to have a human who's gonna respond within a few minutes. And we currently use AKIA and they have an AI function they rolled out, so we're training that right now. It's drafting responses. We're the ones who hit send, and we're testing it on automatically sending the Wi-Fi and so forth. But under all this, is nothing to quote our attorney, Keith Brady, nothing is ever resolved over text or email. Take up the call.

Alex Husner: 42:12
Actually, talk to the people, yeah. Yeah, well, and that's the hard part about you know the direction that we're going in now is like everything is just so so automated. And I think, you know, in some cases, and it just depends on the people. Sometimes an automated response is exactly all they need, and they don't want to deal with talking to somebody or even having to see anybody, but that's where you still have to have the person understand I'm talking to this person, and I can tell it's gonna be better if I call them or if they're totally fine, and I can tell that by the messages I'm receiving back, I can keep moving along. But being able to make those decisions and like just you know, trust your instincts of whether somebody needs more or if they're good, and then that way allow you to work on the more impactful tasks that you're gonna make a difference on.

Arlen Buseniz: 42:56
Yeah, the and the key is the 1080-10 rule when it comes to AI, is it's 10% what you put in. AI does 80% of the work, and then there's a 10% on the back end. So this is where like right now it's it's drafting responses, but our team is doing the final edit before we hit send. Uh, when it comes to responding to reviews, you can take the review, put it in there, it puts it out, but a human needs to look at it, maybe humanize that in the end. Um, same way if you're putting articles together, emails together. The the challenge is AI has allowed content to be put out so much that there's there's a book coming out called Return to Real. And the point is the competitive advantage is going to be actually not using AI. Or let me modify that. The human is doing most of the responding backed up with AI. Yeah, this is a big push. Let's come out with this AI chatbot, this AI, so it's it's the front line talking to the guests. No, think of the AI as this amazing assistant that's doing 80% of the back work for us, and then you keep that human touch forward. And what's really interesting, Alex and Annie, in this industry is how many companies are trying to sell an AI chatbot, AI communication, but they don't use it on their own website.

Annie Holcombe: 44:26
Huh. I hadn't thought about that. I'm gonna be aware of it now.

Arlen Buseniz: 44:30
Yeah, yeah. I won't say the name, but they're one of the top property management softwares out there that is selling AI does not use AI in their support.

Annie Holcombe: 44:42
Yeah, they're all gonna be looking at it now.

Alex Husner: 44:46
Yeah. Well, I will say, I don't know if you're alluding to Boom because I work with Boom, um, we do not have a chat bot on the site, but our AI is different than a chat bot in itself. But that is on the list of marketing tasks to get figured out for 2026. So um, but it's but it's it's a really good point, right? And I think that's where people have really steered clear, because I get frustrated. I know if I'm talking to a support line and it's a chatbot, I hate talking to chatbots. I don't want to talk to a chatbot. I want to talk to an AI agent that knows the answers to things and isn't just gonna keep getting me looped around in a circle. And I think that's the difference with good AI versus just, you know, chatbots have been around for years, but the true good AI should know that it has the whole learning module in there and it knows what information to access and it's feeding that up to you. But when it gets to a certain point that it is not able to answer you, that's when it escalates you to somebody without it taking, you know, sitting there and spinning forever, and then you get looped back into the chatbot. I mean, it's gotta be fluid.

Arlen Buseniz: 45:49
So yeah, and this would be like three key steps every vacation rental company should should take. One is build what's called a master prompt where you put a document together that says, here's your brand messaging, who's your ideal client, here's the key benefits, um, here's the tone, how friendly you are, and then you upload that into every chat on Chat GPT, and then it's gonna spit answers back based on that. So if you want to get a draft for an email, you upload that document first and then say, hey, create this draft for email for fall. It puts that out, but you have to do that final 20%. Uh, there's there's too much. There's I've seen way too much where you know, an article or something gets sent to somebody for advice and they run it through chat GPT and actually makes it worse. So they're turned for real. And and what's funny, you know, people are using just emails back and forth with people, they're using AI to create the responses. Here's the deal here's something you notice about successful people, and the the higher people get in a company is the shorter their emails. So maybe instead of just having create this three-paragraph email, and I'm not talking marketing, but just like back and forth.

Alex Husner: 47:05
Yeah, in general, yeah, you're right. Yeah, get to the point. Yeah, that's definitely true. It would save everybody a lot of time, too. Maybe chat GPT is isn't even needed in some cases. Just say what you want to say and keep moving on.

Arlen Buseniz: 47:20
Well, that would be my tip number two, is just shorten the emails down, period. Yeah, so one is creating your master problem, two is just shorten the emails down, and then three is going to be prevent the issue in the first place. Look, we can talk about all these strategies of how we can communicate quickly, how we can take down bad reviews, how we deal with guests that are trying to bully us. Or, hey, you know what? Let's just put out a great product to start with. Let's make sure there's easy ways for them to answer questions and something that drops the 80% we need on the back end.

Annie Holcombe: 47:53
That's a good point. Well, Arlen, you have been a wealth of information. And uh in the beginning, you said, you know, what what what what keeps our listeners going to the end? And I said it's about connection and it's about having an understanding of what another operator's doing in another market. And I think that this episode has been packed with, again, Arlenisms, I'm gonna coin that phrase now and use it all the time. But you've given a lot of really great tips and tricks and ways that you're handling your business that I think any operator, whether they have five properties or 500 properties, can utilize some of these tips and appreciate you sharing all of them. Um but before we go, if there's um anything else that you wanted to impart on us about what you're seeing in the industry and and maybe what you're looking forward to for 2026.

Arlen Buseniz: 48:39
So here's some major trends that are happening out here is you have big outside companies that are purchasing companies here in the area. And then many times the owner or the guest does not know they've been purchased because they're keeping the name on the front, which is I think a really good model if a company is going to be purchased. And but with that, eventually the owners get whiff of it, and usually more so because now they can't get a hold of people as quick as what they want to. So there's going to be, I think, a shift as owners move away from some of the bigger companies to they like the boutique local model. So lean into that, lean into that. And then there's two two principles we all have to keep in mind. One is cream rises to the top, keep that there, but then also um even concept that it's called Kazan from Japan. The idea of continuous improvement. So what that looks like is when a guest checks out, we have an exit survey where they can answer a few different questions. They put that in, we create that work order and we shoot that to our team so they can hopefully get that fixed before the next guest checks in. When an issue pops up in a review, just continuous improvement, get that fixed. And I think the third thing here is business is brutal. Business is brutal. And what I mean is those those moments where you're not sure what the next step is, you're getting slammed with all sorts of things, and you just feel like, man, drowning. Every person in business goes through that. And when when I was pastoring, I had you know literally hundreds of conversations with people going through different things. And I thought about maybe the most encouraging thing for everybody is if there's just a day when everyone shares the stuff they're having to deal with. Because we all we're all human. There's so much we're going through. But the key is with all that's going on, through the proper mindset, through dependence on God, through focusing on simplicity and systems and the next mailbox, we can keep rising above and pushing through that. And in that, we have to come back and think about what's our purpose here. And in the purpose, we're here to create an impact. You guys are doing your impact through the podcast and other things. You know, we do this through creating a good experience for the owners and a good experience for the guests. It's it's all about you just navigate that resistance, and 2026 is going to be a great year. And I say that either one numbers should be up. That's what the data is showing, but with the proper mindset, our businesses are going to get better, leaner, and more effective. So either way, we're going to win in 2026.

Alex Husner: 51:30
Yeah. Oh, I love it here. I heard it here. I love it. No, that's that's so impactful. And you're right. I mean, I think all of us we walk around like all these problems that are happening to me today, and I don't know about anybody else's problems. So I just feel like everything's happening to me, but everybody else and everywhere else they live, they've got stuff that they've got going on too. But um, you see the high highlight reel on social media and on these beautiful websites that we have, but you know, behind the scenes, everybody's dealing with something. So I think just having that empathy and compassion, both for the people you work with, for your homeowners, for your guests, for everybody that's around you, you know, we're all in this together. Well, what a pleasure, Arlen. Thank you so much for coming on. And hopefully, I know Annie will probably see at one of the favor events, and hopefully I'll be down there this spring too. But if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Arlen Buseniz: 52:22
Hey, our company website is destinedreamers.com. My personal website is workwitharlan.com. Workwitharlan.com. Since no one can spell my last name, I went with workwitharland.com.

Alex Husner: 52:36
Smart move. Awesome. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alex and anniepodcast.com. And until next time, thanks everybody.