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Welcome to Alex & Annie: the real women vacation rentals.
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With more than 35 years combined industry experience, Alex User and I'll come to two development connected us between inspiration and opportunity.
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Join us as they highlight the real stories behind the people and brands that have built vacation rentals into the $100 billion industry it is today.
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And now, it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, Alex and Annie.
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We'll start the show in just a minute.
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But first, a word from our premier brand sponsor.
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Hi, I'm Christina.
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I'm the founder of Exceptional Stace and Telluride.
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Exceptional Stace got acquired by Nocturne, and now I'm still involved with the company, but not as a CEO, full-time 24-7 workaholic.
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I am now just enjoying my legacy and watching from the sidelines.
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Before connecting with Nocturne, my business was in a stage of massive growth.
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And we kind of had outlived our in-house systems and our in-house technology marketing, HR accounting.
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We had no formal trainings.
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I had built this from the ground up with a really good team.
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My team was very loyal.
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They had really put their souls into it as well.
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So for me, I didn't just want to sell and be done.
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I wanted to make sure that this was going to be better for everybody and not I was going to just cash out and leave my team to deal with the aftermath.
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Nocturne approached our transition, very much keeping the homeowners and the employees in the forefront, which was really important to me.
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They professionalized a lot of things that they took away from us, like HR, accounting, marketing, and professionalized and centralized all that, which allowed the company and the employees to be able to focus on the things they really needed to focus, which are more local-based and more to their knowledge.
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Nocturne is a multi-destination company.
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The breadth of the amount of potential clients is humongous.
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It has grown, double-digit growth.
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It is not only in our bookings, but also in the homeowners, the number of houses that we've been able to acquire, and just driving ROI.
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I would tell another company leader who's considering joining Nocturne that here I am four years later, and I'm so happy I did it.
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And I'm so proud of what the brand has become and what my team has become.
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I'm very positive about the future of our brand now that it's part of Nocturne, because now it has all the financial researches, the knowledge, the professionalism, people that really know what they're doing on a much higher level, the ability to be part of bigger things like American Express, Platinum, Travel, and other options like that.
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That wouldn't have happened without Nocturne.
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If you're considering your next chapter, go to NocturneLuxury Villas.com to see how they can help you protect your legacy while unlocking new opportunities.
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Welcome to Alex Nanny the Rillamen of Vacation Runnels.
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I'm Alex.
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And I'm Annie.
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And we are joined today by Jim DeVos, who is the president of VR Works.
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Jim, it's so great to see you today.
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It's great to see you guys again.
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It's been a while.
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It's been a while.
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We were just talking about that.
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That's insane.
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And I guess I am very fortunate because we live close together.
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So we get together for lunch, and um you share all kinds of wisdom with me and great advice.
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And I appreciate that.
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But we need to refresh our listeners as to who Jim DeVos is and what your what your background and story is in the vacation rental world.
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Oh, sure.
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My business partner and I started Best Speech Getaways back in 2008.
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And we started with a handful of uh a handful of condo properties that actually my partner could vest it in.
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And uh after about uh after he'd he'd been in it about two or three years, just kind of doing his own thing.
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And um and to and he came to me and said, hey, listen, I think we could do a better job in this business than what I'm seeing in the marketplace that I'm in.
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And so we built a model, and then with that model, we built this thing called Best Beach Getaway.
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That was in 2008, and uh we grew it to about 500 properties managed in the uh in the Panhandle of Florida, Panama City Beach and Avar Beach, and then also on Anna Maria Island.
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In 2023, we actually sold that business to Monarch Collective, and um, which is a great group of people, by the way.
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But in the course of building out Best Beach Getaways and growing it, we also started developing our own tech stack in uh in the in the property management software system area.
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And so uh about 2018 or 19, um, I'm old, so it all blends together for me sometimes.
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Uh we started working on uh our own uh PMS and we and we actually built it, we built it in a way that we could build, test, uh, implement, build, test, implement over the course of sort of the four key silos, if you will, if you look at our business, in in the back office operations system, in housekeeping management, maintenance management, and then in reservations management and guest communications, and then finally in accounting and and financial management.
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So we we spent about four years working on building that and putting the pieces in place, and then and then we rolled it out to ourselves at Best Beach Getaways in uh 2022, and and then 2023 we sold company and 2024 and 25, we started looking at and talking to folks in our business to bring on some other customers, and so uh we have in addition to Best Speech Getaways, we have two other customers now for VR Works.
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And and now that we've sort of gone in that direction and said, okay, do we have a product that works for customers as well as it worked for Best Beech Getaways?
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We now we know we do, and so we're ready to sort of we're ready to sort of show up at the dance with our, you know, with our best with our best wardrobe on and uh share what we have.
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So yeah.
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Oh, that's awesome.
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That's kind of where we are.
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Yeah, no, that's great.
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I'm so excited to watch this unfold for you.
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I know we had you on the podcast the last time four years ago when we were just talking about before we hit play.
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You were one of the first interviews we did.
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I mean, within the first five to ten, I think.
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And I remember you you're telling us some great stories about your early career and like different comparisons of how cars were doing back in the day.
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Okay, okay.
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It wasn't it was close, but it wasn't quite that bad.
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That's right.
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Yeah, but um, but I also remember I I had spoken to you before you had come on the show when you were talking about how you had your own tech and that basically you guys were kind of like assembling your own, you know, stack layer that went on top of the PMS.
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But I'm curious, so when when you moved Beach Getaways um completely to this system, was it still running on another base PMS or did you pull it over completely?
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No, no, no.
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We actually that that was the beauty of the way we built it.
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We we built it sort of a module at a time.
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So we would create the module, test it, it, and then and then test it, then integrate it into the software that we were using at the time.
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We did that with an API.
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Yep.
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And so in each case, each case we as we added a different piece, we tested it, implemented it, worked the bugs out of it, and then and then when we when we got everything in place, then we then the last year we took five of our properties, moved them completely over to VRWorks, and and made sure everything worked seamlessly.
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And then uh and then in 2022, yeah, in 2022, we put the entire inventory on on VR Works.
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So yeah, we we we basically we basically used the PMF that we were in to provide the core as we were adding the elements that needed to be added.
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And then ultimately we got ourselves to where we had our own, and it all worked.
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It all worked, yeah, which was important.
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It all work.
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Yeah, yeah, that's great.
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And so the nice thing is, the nice thing is as you were finding bugs, you didn't have to call anybody, you just dialed up your was it your was it your son?
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You had you had your son is working with you, right?
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What but he wasn't on that part, he was doing something else.
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If I'm oh yeah, well, I I have but yeah, I have a son who is actually he's he's now the general manager of of Beth Beach.
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He will he is actually actually I have two sons.
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Well one of them is uh the general manager of Beth Beach, the other one is the revenue manager, and so yeah, and and they were and you'd have to meet my children to know this, but uh they they they were my harshest critic.
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They are my harshest critic of anything.
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So so so uh so boy, they made sure that software worked for them.
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And if it and if there was anything that didn't work, as you can imagine, I heard about it.
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I heard about it over family dinners, I heard about it over the phone, I heard about it in the office.
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Yeah, so yeah, I got I got a faceful of it.
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So we we made sure that it was I made sure we made sure that it was pretty bulletproof.
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Yeah, that's that's that's good.
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It's actually good to have that kind of feedback.
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I'm sure they love you sticky notes on your computer in your office too, right?
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You name it, they communicated with me any way they possibly could.
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You bet.
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So now you've got a couple other companies that are using it, and that's gotta be exciting too.
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Exciting and nerve-wracking, right?
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Because it's like this is your baby, and it's okay if your baby messes up for you, but if it messes up for anybody else, you know, it's a little nerve-wracking.
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But have I mean, have you ever I I know I I know you've had some really interesting things in your career from the airlines to the car industry and that, but have you ever done anything in tech specifically before?
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Uh no, not really.
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Not not other than not other than VR work.
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I mean, it it it it basically um uh and we've got by the way, we've got a uh I'm not that you'd want me as the face of the company, but I am the face of the company.
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But that but but but that's not you know, we've got some really terrific people uh who work with us, who really help make this thing work and hum along the way it should.
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Um uh we have a proper project uh we have a project manager, uh and I would I would describe him as our lead software engineer who actually came to us.
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Um he was a programmer with Honda, uh Honda Honda Honda Motor Company.
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Oh yeah, he's based in he's based in Ohio, terrific guy, and and he has he really helps us keep things on the straight and narrow, manage the projects correctly, make sure that when we're doing an enhancement, we know what the end game is and that and that everybody's playing along in that end game.
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Um and then and then uh we have a we have uh programming teams, actually, our programming teams are in India.
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I've had the chance to do, I shouldn't say I've done some tech work in other fields.
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Um not quite not as quite as complex as the PMS system, but the guys that we have in India are absolutely stellar, just highly capable people, and and absolutely know what they're doing.
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And they're and it's interesting to me how over the course of the last five years or so, these guys have actually learned uh from us really the dynamics of the vacation rental business.
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And what are the things that we should be paying attention to, and what are the things that they should be paying attention to to make to make things work the way they're supposed to.
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Yeah, better tech.
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Yeah, better one of the you know, as I've uh over my history with Best Beach, we acquired about 10 different vacation rental companies, smaller ones, a couple of them fairly decent size, but most of them in the smaller 50 properties or less range.
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Every one of them had their own PMS system that they were working with.
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And it's all the names that you would expect them to be.
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And so we'd have a chance to look at those systems every time and evaluate them because we went into the acquisition open-minded and said, if they had something better than we have, let's adopt what they have.
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And so we'd look at these different systems, and and number one, none of them uh work as well as the core of what we had, but then none of them clearly was working as well as where we were going with our own uh PMS system.
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And and so for us, what we saw was kind of a gap in the marketplace.
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And and the gap is really to me, the gap is really about uh efficiency.
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Okay.
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And some of them it's easy to get around in, some of it it's not so easy to get around in.
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But when you start to break it all apart, what you don't see to me, what you don't see is a system that allows for an operator in our business, a vacation rental manager, to really optimize the efficiency within their organization.
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And and the way we built VR Works was we wanted it to be a system that made everybody's job easier, that allowed everybody to to do more without overburdening themselves, and to make something that was really scalable at a variety of different levels.
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And so but the core focus is how do I make everybody in the organization more efficient with the software that I have?
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And so that's really to me what makes bet what makes VR Works a uh a really good product for for vacation rental managers to consider.
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Because at the end of the day, if you make efficiency work to your advantage, at the end of the day, you end up more profitable.
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If you'll notice, the the tagline for VR works is bigger, better, bottom line.
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And that's exactly the way we think about uh uh property management systems.
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They should be in they should be a facilitator of making your property management company more efficient and therefore more profitable.
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And and so so that's what we got.
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That's what we built.
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We built something that's streamlined housekeeping management, streamlined maintenance management, streamlined reservation management, guest services, and accounting.
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And so, and so the thing is when you when you have something that is more efficient, uh it makes everything work a whole lot better.
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It makes on the simple level, it allows you to get your guests in earlier because you know instantaneously when a property is ready.
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And you and it and if the system works right, then it communicates with the guest instantaneously.
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And if you get a guest in early, you guys have been in the business, you know.
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You get a you get you get a guest in two hours early.
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Oh my lord.
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Yeah, you won the lottery.
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You done won the lottery.
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Yeah, and so we wanted to make sure that it was that that it did that.
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And and actually, the now, this is okay, this is this is a little back behind the curtain.
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The first summer that we that we operated our housekeeping and maintenance management system, the first summer I said, listen, I'm gonna make this thing, make sure this thing works.
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So I'm going to be the one who is going to make sure that that we know when everything's ready and that the guests are communicated with.
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And we were, and this is summer, this was in summertime, peak season.
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We did this.
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And so we would have about 350 arrivals on any particular day, on any particular Saturday.
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I did, I did all the notifications by myself.
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I made sure everything, I made sure all the guests were notified because it was so easy.
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And I did it from my home, I did it while I was having coffee for breakfast, or when I was sitting by the pool in the afternoon.
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It it the system was really worked and it got and it got the guests in early.
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Crazy.
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Just crazy.
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So so that was important.
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Then making sure that operations, we were eliminating as much paper as we possibly could, which we did.
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And so financial reporting got a whole lot easier, and it got a whole lot more efficient, which made uh made our people happy because they didn't have to, they didn't have to constantly input things because everything was done electronically.
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It made our finance team happy because things weren't getting missed from a billing perspective, made guests made made the owners happy because the owners saw timely and accurate financial reporting.
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And so we made everything we just made everything a whole lot more efficient.
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And at the end of the day, from the way we were to the way we got to, we almost doubled our net profit.
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Well, because we had the system, uh, we we were growing without adding headcount, we were growing without mistakes, we were growing with systems that allowed us to grow and allowed us to continue to operate with a peak level of efficiency.
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And so after we sort of got through the acquisition of Best Feach, what my partner and I decided, you know, we need to we need to bring this to market.
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We need to talk to other people about what we have.
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And so that's really, and so we did that on a kind of a smaller scale, and now we're ready to to uh bring it out wider and talk to more people.
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But I will tell you this unlike I want to have property managers, owners of companies who who you and who the three of us would look at and go, or that's a smart gap, those are those are the people who who will easily get what I'm talking about, number one.
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And number two, yeah, as you as you guys know, software is not it's not static, it's dynamic.
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And so if you've got if you've got smart people who look critically at the business, they will bring you things and ideas that you may not have thought about.
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And so what we're trying to create with VR Works is this collaboration of really smart people who can help us take what is a really great base of efficiency and make it even better by bringing in more intellectual capital into the process, if that makes any sense at all.
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We'll be back in just a minute.
00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:51.359
But first, a word from our premier brand sponsor.
00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:57.279
I'm Mercedes, founder of MBX Homes, and we are a co hosting company based in Southern California.
00:19:57.279 --> 00:20:02.160
We manage over 100 properties to date and Logify has become the core of our business.
00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:04.880
With component, I don't even think our business could run.
00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:06.319
It truly has become the part.
00:20:06.319 --> 00:20:08.640
We're able to see all of the reservations.
00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:12.799
Our cleaners go into their portal and they make sure all the cleans are done for the day.
00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:17.039
And of course, our owners know exactly what's happening in their property.
00:20:17.039 --> 00:20:23.759
And I think that's amazing to have full transparency in your business on both the operational side and your client side.
00:20:23.759 --> 00:20:30.000
At MVX Homes, we pride ourselves in brand recognition, and Logify has truly helped with that.
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:39.599
Since we have so many repeat clients, we're easily able to welcome our guests back by sending the direct booking link, and I think that is the feature that has really helped our business grow.
00:20:39.599 --> 00:20:54.960
By having a direct booking website, not only are we really promoting our own brand and our own properties, we are able to fully control that reservation and make the most profit for both ourselves and of course our clients, aka our co-hosting owners.
00:20:54.960 --> 00:20:57.839
The Logify team has been wonderful.
00:20:57.839 --> 00:21:01.839
They truly have supported so many hosts, including myself.
00:21:01.839 --> 00:21:09.599
During our onboarding for Logify, we had a dedicated person who was with us every step of the way when it came to onboarding.
00:21:09.599 --> 00:21:18.240
And ever since then, when we have new questions or onboarding new properties, we're able to reach out to Logify and they are able to help us integrate seamlessly.
00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:26.480
They're so easy to get a hold of wherever you're getting a hold of them via Logify themselves, you're emailing them, or you're calling the support number.
00:21:26.480 --> 00:21:32.559
Somebody is always there to take care of you and to make sure that the problem is resolved in real time.
00:21:32.559 --> 00:21:37.759
If you're a co-host managing multiple properties, I truly do recommend Logify.
00:21:37.759 --> 00:21:42.799
It's a real tool that we use every single day, and it has only helped grow our business.
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Looking to streamline how you manage your short-term rentals?
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When you and I got together last, you were telling me about kind of your go-to-market strategy and and how you wanted to uh price things.
00:22:13.519 --> 00:22:24.960
And I I don't know if you were prepared to talk about that here, but I thought it was an interesting kind of the the way you are thinking that you want to work with property managers to sell them on utilizing the system.
00:22:25.279 --> 00:22:25.920
Oh yeah.
00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:31.119
And they scratch their head and they go, really?
00:22:31.119 --> 00:22:36.880
So my thought is that we bring this to market and we bring on people this way.
00:22:36.880 --> 00:23:16.319
Instead of my having to charge you per unit per month, how about if we work out a way that that basically we end up having the customer pay for the software by by putting and we've got this, we've got this engineer into the software now, by putting a very small, a very small markup on top of things so that instead of you as a property manager having to figure out what am I spending on my PMS this now, I'm not spending anything on my PMS until somebody buys my vacation.
00:23:16.319 --> 00:23:27.680
And so if we start there, then all of a sudden we have a partnership where we're not worried, you're not worried about the expense, and I'm not worried about collecting the money.
00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:32.319
We're looking at the business together and going, okay, we've generated this kind of revenue together.
00:23:32.319 --> 00:23:38.960
We're actually thinking about this in a way where we have it set up so that we take that slight markup and we share in it.
00:23:38.960 --> 00:23:43.680
So we make a little money, the property manager makes a little money.
00:23:43.680 --> 00:23:49.519
So instead of proper instead of the cost of the PMS being a cost, it actually becomes a revenue set.
00:23:49.519 --> 00:23:52.480
So it's a different, it's a different way to look at it.
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:58.640
Yeah, I mean, this way, you know, everybody has skin in the game, you know, and that's that's pretty powerful.
00:23:58.640 --> 00:24:02.880
I've I don't know that I've heard of any PMSs doing it that way.
00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:10.960
I mean, there's some that softwares that do it based on a percentage of of revenue, like the you know uh revenue management softwares and things.
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:13.440
But yeah, no, that's interesting.
00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:19.200
And yeah, they better hope that they get or you better hope that they get some bookings, but if they're not, it's probably because something's wrong.
00:24:19.279 --> 00:24:24.079
So yeah, well, well, but and that but that something wrong isn't gonna be me.
00:24:24.079 --> 00:24:24.640
Right.
00:24:24.640 --> 00:24:26.799
Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:26.799 --> 00:24:30.559
But but uh so yeah, I have an incentive to make everything work that way.
00:24:30.559 --> 00:24:31.599
You got that right.
00:24:31.759 --> 00:24:35.519
Yeah, you bet so why don't you why don't you tell us a little bit?
00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:44.240
So you um you mentioned like you know, you sold your business um and then you got bored and you decided to start up another business, which is not something most people do.
00:24:44.240 --> 00:24:49.039
Usually when people get out of the vacation rental business, they get out of it and then they go like sail off into the sunset.
00:24:49.039 --> 00:24:52.480
But you decided, like, nope, I need more punishment, I'm gonna stay in the business.
00:24:52.480 --> 00:24:53.440
Exactly.
00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:54.880
So now you're doing all of it.
00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:55.680
So tell us about it.
00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:59.440
Well, tell us a little bit about that and and what you're doing next.
00:24:59.440 --> 00:25:05.039
Because you've got now you've moved to south, more south than central Florida, so away from the pandemic, so a different market altogether.
00:25:05.359 --> 00:25:06.079
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:16.480
Well, actually, uh yeah, it's kind of fun because we had we actually acquired uh a sort of a medium-sized vacation management company in Orlando.
00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:32.480
And and then and then but but before we acquired them, we actually acquired two small companies in the Cape Coral Fort Myers market, and then and then a small company in in the Orlando area before we actually acquired the larger company.
00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:38.079
We're we're rebranding the company under the brand Swanky Vake.
00:25:38.079 --> 00:25:41.359
It's going to be a great deal of fun.
00:25:41.359 --> 00:25:44.240
We're we've got about 180 properties.
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:46.240
We actually have an operating partner.
00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:49.200
I'm not for Best Beach Getaways, I was the operating partner.
