The A-Ha Moment: 2 Year Flashback to Where it All Began

Hey guys, this is a little bit of a different episode. This is flashback to November 3rd of 2021, which was the launch of the Alex Nanny podcast. Crazy to think it's been two years, but we just wanted to first say thank you to our audience, to all of our friends, family supporters, industry colleagues that have supported us in this past two years. It's been incredible and we're just so grateful for you.

Yeah, and one of the things we talk about all the time is that you can't connect the dots until you look backwards, and so, with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back and connect a whole lot of dots that we didn't know were there. And to, our favorite comment for Marcus Rader from HostAway is you know, planting the seeds. We planted a lot of seeds along the way and they have been very fruitful for us. Some of them have been seeds of opportunities, some have been seeds of lessons and lessons learned. But I think the last two years has been pretty incredible I think you would agree for both of us, for our industry, for our friends. So, yeah, thanks to everybody that supported us. It's been a really wild ride and we're looking forward to two more years or more Absolutely.

And we will say one funny fact when we recorded this episode, I think we had to do it three times because we did not realize how to press record. So we learned, we learned a lot, very early on. We made mistakes. That happened, but that's been very much part of this authentic journey and it's just been an honor to share it with you. So, without further ado, tune into episode one, the aha moment.

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. With more than 35 years combined industry experience, Alex Hussner 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 million industry. It is today and now it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, Alex and Annie.

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

Now I'm Annie and we are so excited to bring you this first episode of the Alex and Annie podcast. But a long time coming, alex, so I don't know about you, but I'm just busting at the scenes ready to get this going.

I know me too. This is so exciting. We've, you know, annie and I have been talking about this idea for quite a while now, and it started with clubhouse. Actually, this is going back in the spring and her and I just were kind of kicking around an idea that we thought it would be fun to take some of the topics that we were talking about in clubhouse and make them into a podcast, because we just we saw an opportunity to do a deeper dive into some of the brands and the people that were coming into the clubhouse environment and just kept going with it, and the more that we talked to people about it, we just got so much support and it ended up becoming a thing. So I'm super excited, annie. It's awesome.

Yeah, and I think the one thing that was the common thread with all of this is that we started to realize that everything happens for a reason and you're put in the place that you're supposed to be, at the right moment in time to get to where you want to go, and all the signs just kept pointing us to do this, and so super excited about what we can talk about and take deep dives into the real people that kind of power vacation rental. So this is going to be a good journey. I think we've got a lot of future guests lined up, and so I think this first episode we really just wanted to let everyone know what we wanted to accomplish with this podcast and what our goals were in terms of the reach in the industry, who we wanted to talk to and kind of what the look and the feel of the Alex and Annie podcast is going to be.

Yeah, absolutely. And, annie, I mean we've talked about this before we don't want to just tell the stories of the things that have worked right, like we want to talk to people that will tell us the things that haven't worked. I think there is so much opportunity in our industry to be open about some of those things that are on both sides, and really we have such a collaborative industry as it is that I just I think it's interesting for people to be able to differentiate some of those strategies and especially with how fast our industry is changing, there's just an opportunity, I think, for us to be able to connect people and be able to make those opportunities more visible. But Annie and I very much feel the same way when it comes to business motivation and just kind of personal inspiration and I think that's part of how this came together too that we truly feel that everything that has prepared us for this moment has happened in the right alignment and we really feel this podcast, that is that for us, and we're really excited to bring on a wide variety of people to interview, and some people will be in the industry, some people won't be in the industry. I think the travel industry is so broad and we've got so many connections that are not necessarily vacation rental specific, that bring a lot to the table, and so we're excited about having that diversity there. And on this episode we're just going to give, as Annie said, a little bit background on who we are and the purpose of the podcast. But there might be other episodes where we do the same thing, where it's just Annie and I talking about something that's important to us or a hot button issue within the industry. So we're excited about that. We think that this is going to be a lot of fun and we're excited to bring everybody on board with us.

Yeah, and I think, as you pointed out, we want to dive into sort of as you keep referring to when we talk about this, the ahamam, the spark, the thing that either it didn't work and it sparked a new idea, or it did work and it sparked a bigger idea. And I think that so many people in this industry whether it be a CEO or somebody working in operations at a property or at a resort, I mean they've all had moments where they just realize that this was why they were in the industry, and I think we each have experienced those pivotal times in our career, maybe multiple times in our career. Yeah, and I think we've just learned a lot from the people that we work around and we want to be able to share their stories, because I think there's just so many wonderful journeys that these people have been on and we've been fortunate to be part of some of them and we've been fortunate to watch some of them, and then there's others that we just want to know more about, and so this is an opportunity for us to kind of, you know, quell our curiosity and get in more information and talk to these people and really understand what is it that makes them tick what put them where they are on their journey, within vacation rentals, but again outside the industry as well, I think you to hospitalities is probably the general term. We might talk to people in restaurants or bars, or, you know, the hotel industry.

We might be in restaurants and bars while we talk to them too, Annie.

We absolutely could possibly do that, and I think the women's conference will be a good test of that.

Yeah, absolutely, that was in December. Yes, yes, we're super excited about that and we have an announcement that we'll make at the end of the podcast, so please don't jump off. Stay tuned to get that at the end. But yeah, I know you're 100% right, annie, and you know we've coined this term that I don't know how it really came about, but I think it was just organically you and I talking about it. It's that aha moment and that's what we're seeking to find and what was that aha moment of our guests? And we're going to tell our aha moments that we've experienced in our combined 35 years of industry vacation rental experience. So it's going to be exciting. We want to get to the story behind the story of these brands and people and some of the people that we bring on. Also, we want to bring on operators, so people that aren't necessarily invited to do these podcasts often. We want to hear from the people actually in the field that are out there doing the work, what they're seeing and what the challenges are, what the opportunities are, what are the things that really make them tick and stay in this industry for as long as they have. So it's going to be really exciting.

I can't wait. Yeah, I think that this is going to be a fun journey and one that we want our listeners to come on with us and participate in. So, if you are listening, make sure you follow us on our social media handles and go to our website. Sign up for our information. We'll post all that for you and we'll continue to communicate through social media, but we want this to be a podcast that is participatory with the industry, so people can recommend people we should talk to. They can nominate themselves for us to talk to. If you're interested in telling your story, we want to hear it.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you're looking at who this podcast is for, this podcast is for anybody within the vacation rental industry or outside of vacation rental industry. As we said, we're going to bring on business leaders and business operators in different segments besides just in travel and vacation rentals. Annie and I have a lot of experience within branding, distribution, marketing, so a lot of that entrepreneurship, business, a lot of the topics will probably be related to those realms. So if you're interested in any of those things, this podcast is certainly for you. We want it to be an inspiration. We want this to be a motivational podcast. Annie and I both listen to a lot of different podcasts and audiobooks and we read a lot of that same content that we want to bring to the airwaves that I don't think that it's really being talked about in vacation rentals, but having the right information that you're listening to and consuming on a regular basis is for me at least. That has been a game changer in terms of making sure that I keep myself motivated even when times get tough, and hopefully we can bring on guests that really bring that to our listeners. And one thing to hear that's important to note this is definitely not just for women Alex and Annie. It's our podcast. We are the real women of vacation rentals. But this is not just a woman podcast and it's not just that we're going to have women guests, so don't limit anybody thinking that. So this is open for everybody. We want this to be a very diverse community of all different people from all sides of the industry.

Yeah, and I think, most importantly, at the end of the day, the one thing that the common thread that you and I both have with each other is we want it to be fun.

We want to laugh.

We want to cry a little bit maybe, but maybe more crying from laughter than crying from sadness. But yeah, we just want it to be a good experience and be authentic, be authentic selves, and that's really what is the great thing about this industry is there are so many really authentic people here that are fun and just have wonderful experience. So again, not for just women, it's for anybody that likes to have a good time and wants to learn.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. We definitely want this to be fun, high energy, great motivation. So well, without further ado, annie, I'm sure some people probably are wondering who we are in the first place. I don't think everybody knows who we are, so why don't we give the listeners a little bit of information about our backgrounds and what we do and where we've been? So I will let you take the stage, my friend.

Oh great. So, without dating myself, I've been in and around vacation rentals since the late 90s but I started out in the hotel business so kind of come with a lot of hotel industry knowledge. So I know for some vacation rental purists, having a hotel experience can be a little frustrating because you don't want to be, you know you don't want, didn't want people to tell you to be a hotel, and so I learned and adapted a lot of my hotel learnings. For vacation rentals I had the good fortune of being with a company that was kind of starting out in vacation rentals around 1999. They were building and going after management had a mentor, a gentleman who was my manager, who's our VP of operations, who just said I see, you got a lot of talent. I don't have a job description, but this is what I want you to accomplish, and it was very much about meeting with people builders, meeting with developers, meeting with HOA boards, meeting with individual owners everything that we could do to take over condominium management in the Panama City Beach Market. So that went on for several years. I honed a lot of really good hardening skills in terms of being rejected and turned down and then I found myself in a scenario where the OTAs were starting to be a big thing and Expedia was coming very hot and heavy into the market. They had been working with hotels. They wanted the condo product that we had. At the time the company I worked for had about 3,000 units under management. We had about 1,500 on rental and they wanted those units and I can see why. But they didn't understand anything about vacation rentals and so I was very vocal with them. That ultimately turned into an opportunity to work for Expedia. So I became the market manager for Expedia the Panhandle of Florida into Gulf Shores, Alabama. I did that for two years and then went to their key accounts team, which is on the global team managing what at the time was called alternative accommodations. So it's always funny to me it was vacation rentals as long as I had been in it, but they were calling it alternative, and so it was very much trying to educate internally the teams at Expedia. What is? It's not alternative. It's stuff that people use vacation rentals. I had been doing it. My parents book the same beach house in the Carolinas every year growing up, so they needed to learn a lot. I needed to learn a lot, so I drank the Kool-Aid. I was a MTA devotee. I loved Expedia and I had the opportunity on the key account side to work with very large groups wind and vacation rentals, wind and vacation ownership, diamond resorts. I worked with a platform company called leisure link who did distribution and channel manager and vacation rental space, so I had a lot of really good experiences there. Ultimately they bought home away and all the mindset was they were going to move the alternative lodging over to the home away team and my position was kind of kind of go away and go more towards traditional hotel segment and that wasn't my expertise at all. So I left Expedia and then went to work for the company that I work for now, which is Lexicon Travel, and we're a channel manager within vacation rentals and so my experience has been very much all over the place in terms of various aspects of the industry. But it makes me very well rounded and makes me an empathetic partner to have, because I understand all facets of the industry and I think that's where you and I connected is that you were coming from a place that I had been in and I was presenting you a different side of like how you looked at things and we just kind of clicked in those conversations and so you know again, my experience has brought me to this moment and now your experience is bringing you to this moment and I think hearing where you came from, to how you got to here, is important to tell our story of where we are.

Yeah, absolutely, and there are a lot of similarities. One thing to mention too you're in Panama City Beach, florida, and I'm in North Monroe Beach I don't know if we've said that yet so we're both on the east coast of the United States. I'd say what? Maybe a 12 hour drive. It's definitely not close. I mean, if we're going to see each other, we're going to fly or meet at a conference or somewhere else, but very similar destinations in that Panama City Beach and Myrtle Beach are both very much condo resort style inventory for the majority of the vacation rental segment that we've got here, just but note, I'm applying at원� and there's… big vacation areas. And one thing that you touched on, annie, when you were just giving your background, which reminds me of what's going on now Expedia and booking. They wanted to learn about this quote unquote alternative accommodation segment. It's really interesting now because it's like these investment firms that they're coming in. They wanna learn about the short-term rental industry, and you and I had a discussion about that earlier. That it's short-term rentals and vacation rentals, as far as we're concerned, are still a little bit of a different thing, and maybe at some point they'll be more merged together. But it's interesting to see there was a lot of interest in vacation rentals or alternative accommodations back then and there's even more so now, and that attention obviously leads to a lot of opportunities for a lot of people but a lot of change in the industry and there's a lot going on right now. But as far as where I come from, I'm from New Hampshire, originally moved to Myrtle Beach after college and worked at a couple of different advertising agencies. When I first moved down here and Condo World was one of my first clients, this was during 2008, 2009, so right around the recession. It was really hard working at an advertising agency trying to get any client to buy anything at that point, but somehow I got Condo World to buy a lot of stuff and they became basically my one and only good client for that year but built a really great relationship with their team. And to give a little background on Condo World, condo World is a rental management company in North Myrtle Beach. At the time they managed around 250 units, I believe, and just in North Myrtle Beach at that time. So again, this is 2009. They hired me to come on full-time for a project that really took. There's similarities in what I do now, but it took so many different paths along the way. It was going to be a website project that was gonna use the Condo World brand to help promote other professionally managed rental companies. So this was it's really it was early for its time, but this was when VRBO was first coming on in popularity and there was a lot of concern within the industry on what that was going to do to the professionally managed side. And really I mean that concern has not gone away, but it's not just because of VRBO. Airbnb is just as much of a concern, and just the ability for individual owners to be able to run their own technology and operations now, but this was way before that. None of it was nearly as sophisticated, but so they hired me to come on. We built this website. That was. The purpose of it was to advertise the benefits of renting through professionally managed vacation rentals or vacation rental managers, and not just Condo World. We wanted to show other vacation rental companies in North and South Carolina. That's how it started, and it was a paper click model website where we had the screenshot of the company's homepage and when you clicked you went right over to their site and I mean it was pretty. It was pretty, you know, basic, simple, but it worked. We were generating a lot of traffic and we were doing our own marketing to get traffic to those sites. But ultimately one of the difficulties we ran into was that nobody knew if that traffic was converting, for one of two reasons. One, they either didn't have online bookings which I know this sounds like the dark ages, but it's true. There was a time when there was no such thing as online bookings. And the companies that did have online bookings, they didn't have sophisticated enough tracking to be able to know if the traffic we were sending was actually turning into a booking. So we were sending a lot of traffic, but it was a hard product to sell and we were just getting our feet wet into how hard it really would be. But there was a lot going on in the industry at this time and the more that I got my head around everything that was going on at Condo World, the more I immersed myself. I saw a massive need for us to refocus our branding efforts. So that's what we did and we drew back from that project. We at that time, condo World was this amazing company that had been in North Morrill Beach since 1985 and had a stellar reputation with homeowners and guests and a name that had truly the runway for growth that could take us anywhere. Condo World is such a global name that we're not limited to. It wasn't Clyburn Vacation Rentals or Alex's Vacation Rentals, it was a brand that could go anywhere. So, looking at that opportunity, I thought if we wanna be able to use our brand and we wanna be able to rent properties for other companies, we've really gotta make sure our brand is very strong. So I talked to the owners of our company and I said I think we need to put this other website project on the back burner. Come back to it once we've got our house in line, and that's what we did. So we spent the next three to four years and really rebranded the company, got everything in line, from our communications and ads and how. All of our copy everything, how we were displayed outwards was now streamlined in a much more cohesive manner, and we had grown in that time period to about 325 units. So we were growing quickly and we were kind of ahead of our time a little bit in terms of being able to pull that brand together. So that worked out really well. In 2014, we then relaunched a similar program to what we had. But this was really the first iteration that really got some steam to it of our out of market program and basically what we did. We went to Myrtle Beach which, as I mentioned, we're in North Myrtle Beach and partnered with several resorts in the area that had different amenities and different abilities to do shorter stays and things that our North Myrtle Beach inventory did not offer, and it would just open up a wider net for our guests to be able to book truly the entire 60 miles of the grand strand, as we call it. So that was the first part of it and really over the next few years we learned and stumbled and trying to become an OTA while also being a property management company. I cannot say it was easy, but we definitely. We made it through and we licked our wounds and we built an incredible program that now, looking back, I'm so glad that we did it the way that we did. Our condo world is the biggest locally owned vacation rental booking site for our area, so we've been able to figure out how to do it, but it was tough going at some points there.

And if everything was easy? If it was easy, everybody would do it.

Exactly, yeah, exactly exactly, and we're still learning every day. But we've expanded into other destinations and that's really the future of continuing that expansion, finding more partnerships. Our local portfolio is now approximately 600 units in North Myrtle Beach, so from 250 to 600 several years later. We've built our own technology stack with our own PMS channel manager and booking engine and I serve as chief marketing officer for the company. So I've involved in all aspects of business strategy development and marketing and it's been a lot of fun. But Annie and I met at a conference a few years ago. We met at OPMA. Opma, which is the Onsite Property Managers Association, which we're hoping we'll get back up and running here soon. But it's an association that really caters to the type of inventory that's in Panama City Beach and Myrtle Beach, which is that onsite condo resort inventory really and the different struggles that they have with providing the F&B really being the more hotel-based company, but still also the inventory is owned by individual owners, so it's a little bit different than the offsite type rental companies and different struggles there. But Annie and I met there and we just immediately kicked it off and we've worked together on different projects and just stayed in touch and became great friends and just really see eye to eye on a lot of things not everything, but a lot of things. And so that's me, and that's where we're at, and Annie, I'm just so excited to be here.

No, and I think, alex, just listening to you talk about that, it just shows one example of just the tenacity of the people in our industry. Like you guys had an idea and you stuck with it and you worked with it and you fell a few times and stumbled and had to try new things. And I think that that goes into sort of another facet of what we wanted this podcast to be about was talking about mentorship and how really important that is and was for both of us coming up in our careers, and we've had multiple mentors in different areas and I know that your mentor, roy, he was just a tremendous figure, not only in your life and in the market of Morrill Beach, but in the industry, and just a big icon, and so I would love to hear more about how he really helped you and gave you your wings to fly and be the success that you are.

Yeah, thank you, and absolutely I mean a lot. I think a lot of people some are a good amount of our listeners may know Roy Roy Clyburn. He was the owner and founder of condo world from day one until a couple. Just about two months ago he passed away. A large part of my love for this company honestly comes from him. He was my sorry to interrupt.

We did say there were.

Oh man, one of her horses, like five times a. Yeah, excuse me. He was my boss and mentor for 12 years and it was Excuse me, it was. It was sad when he passed, but he really laid a groundwork for all of us to continue on the, you know, the basis of what he had built and he was a truly pioneer for the industry. And I honestly, I don't think I know in terms of the mentorship side I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for him. When I first moved to Myrtle Beach and this is crazy to me looking back but I was told by my early employers that I would never make a certain amount of money, I would never rise to any sort of status in the business community here, because I wasn't from here, I wasn't one of those local families that built the beach and, you know, own the land and all that. I didn't have any connections. I was young and ultimately I was female and I thought, my God, I mean this deck is stacked against me pretty bad. I mean I might as well just head home to New Hampshire. And you know, interestingly, interestingly enough, the people who were telling me this and really just discouraging the heck out of me. They were all women and you know that it really that bothers me that, that that happens early in my career, because it, honestly, if I hadn't met Roy, I think I probably would have believed them because I had no reason otherwise to. I mean it just it was just baffling to me but I thought, okay, that's just the way things are down there and I guess maybe I should leave. But you know, I, growing up in New Hampshire, my dad owned an advertising agency for 25 years and I saw him become successful and truly wanted to replicate that success in my life. But I just I didn't ever remember his company telling people that were working for him, things that I was hearing and heard of each as a young business person business person, excuse me, so excuse me but then I met Roy and he had faith in me that I could do anything and he really helped shape the early part of my career and was just built the confidence that I have to this day and he really was huge for getting me off on the right foot. So you know, I really believe that mentorship is incredibly important and you know, as Andy said, we want to use this podcast as a means to connect people, uplift people, connect to the right information or the right connections that might help. You know, our listeners have their own aha moments, because I know I had several of those in the early days and continue to. But you've got to be surrounded by the right information and people to have that. I think anybody can achieve any level of success given those, those important ingredients. So and Annie, I think you've you've shared some of your experiences with me to about you know, similar things that happened to you and mentors that you've worked with, and why don't you tell us a little bit about what happened with you and Panama City Beach?

Yeah, and I think what's funny about it is again, we keep talking about we have all these similarities and these like there's so many operative, so many times when our paths should or could have crossed but they didn't. So my first real strong mentor was a gentleman that had come in. His name was Russ Smith and he had come into manage the resort that I worked at. It was actually a hotel resort at the time there's largest convention space in the market. We had 4550,000 square feet of meeting space. We had 625 guest rooms. It was for hotel buildings. I was doing sales there and he came in because the owners wanted somebody who had been through sort of the, the metamorphosis from a small, sleepy, you know mom and pop hotel destination to being a vacation rental destination. So the condos, they. So Myrtle Beach was sort of what we had our site set on. So again he came from Myrtle Beach. He came in and he was like you're really underutilized, kind of in the position you were in, you're in and I was doing sales and special events and those type of things and more. I was doing religious group sales and tour and travel sales and sports sales and it was traveling around and I was having a good time and it was good, but it just wasn't fulfilling. So he saw something in me that he couldn't put his finger on and said I want you to go out and do this. And I kind of alluded to it kind of in my you know what my career genesis is. But he said you know, we need to go out and the goal is for us to be able to manage as many properties in this market as they're built. You know, get them before they're completely built. We want to have, you know, all of the rentals in the building that we can possibly get. We want to be the leader in the market in terms of not only condo management, in terms of vacation rental management, but also association management. So associations were new to me. That was a. That was a big learning curve. But he just let me. He let me have my freedom to just go out and talk to people and again make mistakes and say the wrong thing and, yeah, known to say the wrong thing so many times. I've had my foot in my mouth more times and I could possibly imagine. The thing that's great about him was he never he never said you shouldn't have done that. He would always say like well, what did you learn from this? What would you have done differently? And I had had a female co worker previous to that who just said you know, you just need to do what I tell you do when I tell you to do it. And she was very quiet right and she had the opportunity to really give me guidance and make me look up to her, and for that I was always very resentful. So when Russ came along and was just like look, I want to just help you be the best that you can be I don't know what that is the we're going to do it together, you know. So we ended up being successful. But coming from the woman that gave me a hard time to him, I knew the value of having somebody who just believed in you. And they may not have known your strengths and they may not have known all your weaknesses, but they recognize that those strengths and weaknesses are what make you who you are and make you unique. And he just let me just you know again fly free and do all kinds of really funny things and met a lot of really fascinating people. But I walked away from that experience knowing that when I got to a certain point in my career, I didn't want to be that woman that another girl would look at and say, well, gee, they could be mentoring me, but instead they're squashing me, or or, you know, trying to kill my spirit or, you know, squash my spark. Keep me from having my power in that moment and so that was another thread. That kind of I think Alex, even I talked about it drew us together is just we had a lot of a lot of non-female mentors through our career and some will say you should always have that and you should, and so hopefully out of this podcast we will bring more women mentors into the industry, but I think, also highlighting that there are strong men who want to support the women to be successful.

Yeah, absolutely, and I see so much of what I experienced in your story too. I mean so similar. I think having some way, that someone as your mentor that just gives you that one runway for growth, without saying exactly how you have to do it, is a game changer. I mean, it gives you that confidence to build your own path, and obviously you're going to mess up, but it's nice to know that you can designate for yourself and you can realize for yourself that, yes, ok, what I did was not the best decision or this didn't work as well as we thought that it would, but you have the opportunity to determine that for yourself. It's not someone saying, do this and then getting mad at you because you did it wrong. So I think, yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to bring in more of an emphasis on the female mentorship side of the industry, because there is a lot to learn and you and I are both continuous learners, so we're open. There's still so much out there for everybody. But, yeah, interesting stuff for sure, but let's see.

And now, ok, I think we wanted to just kind of I mean, I know we don't want to like drone on for days, because we totally could yeah, I think we touch on what maybe some aha moments for us were along the way and to give you an idea of what we're thinking, those aha moments that we want to pull out of our guests. So maybe, alex, tell us about one for you. I think we both have talked about, we've had multiples throughout our career, but what is something that you think may out besides Roy, because obviously he's very instilled in everything that you do and every part of you. What is something that you think sparked you to be so passionate about this industry?

Yeah, for sure. So one moment in particular comes to mind and, honestly, if Roy was here, I think he would probably say the same for the last 12 years of my career with Condor World, for sure. So when we get this is back 2013, I'd say, as we're building back up to the launch of that first iterative version of our out of market partnership hybrid OTA program Roy wanted to go straight to Florida. He thought there was going to be the best opportunity for us there in Orlando and in a city, beach Destin. And honestly, annie, the only good thing if we had done that is that we probably would have met a lot sooner. That's so true.

We would have been in trouble a lot sooner.

That's the one good thing that could have happened. It could have been a different aha moment, but instead of that I'll never forget the day Roy and I were in his office and we're talking about some of the challenges that we saw and the cost to advertise these other areas and how we would be able to leverage that, and it was immense, and I still don't. At that time I don't think we had any idea how challenging it really would be, but it dawned on me. I said, instead of going straight to Florida, why don't we go to Myrtle Beach? And a light bulb just went off and we both looked at each other like, well, that kind of makes sense, because we don't have any of our own managed properties in Myrtle Beach. They're just in North Myrtle Beach and we get calls for Myrtle Beach all the time. We get calls for people that want to stay by the boardwalk or they want to stay for less than seven nights during the summer, and those are two main things that we don't offer. Our North Myrtle Beach inventory is still to this day. The ocean front part is Saturday to Saturday. We still have a very high demand that we fill up for those days. So we figured out. There's got to be some way that we can make connections in Myrtle Beach to be able to still do the same goal that we had been working on, which was to use the Condor World brand to market other professionally managed companies. And what we did is we reached out to one of our partners that we worked with through the golf industry here, that they also they own golf courses and they also owned a group of resorts and said this is what we're looking at doing. Would you be interested in being on our website? And they said yeah, of course. And one thing I love about our area here and Annie and you and I talk about this a lot is Myrtle Beach is a very collaborative market, and I think the more collaborative a market is, the more the stronger of a market it truly becomes, and that's definitely the case for our situation here in Myrtle Beach area. But we banded together, we got a couple other resort groups, and that was definitely the aha moment, because I tell you what, if we had just gone straight to Florida, besides maybe getting to meet you earlier, we would have ended up becoming very discouraged a lot quicker, because it's a lot harder to manage expansion into another market, especially when it's not inventory that you have control of, when it's a lot farther away and you don't know the people. I mean, we didn't know anybody personally down there it's been. It was a wonderful start to this program, starting in Myrtle Beach with people that we did know, that we could go have meetings with them, we could tour the properties, we could train our staff and that was such a good aha moment to have, and I think if Roy was here he would say the same thing. But so that was it for us. There was many other ones, but in terms of the early years that was definitely my favorite aha moment. But what about for you, annie? What was your aha moment, gosh?

I've got so many of them, but I think the one that probably is the biggest thing for me was when I was at Expedia my first year. I just had the Florida Pay and Handle and that was a lot of inventory and I had hotels and I had vacation rentals and that was when they were really just starting to make a big push to get vacation rentals. But again, so many internal conversations had to happen about how do you showcase a vacation rental, how do you talk about the fees, how do you talk about the odd locations for check-ins and the rules. It's not simple like a hotel and those platforms were built on hotels and so every year they do a business review and they do shift around of the markets that managers have. And they were going to give me Gulf Shores, alabama, and I was like, well, that's going to be great because that's a huge vacation rental market and we're going to go crazy there. And we were on a call with the VP of Market Management at the time and I was going through my numbers and I said excited about Gulf Shores because they have around 16,000 vacation rentals. And he said you know, one month of all things, 6,000. And I said 16,000 and he got really close to the phone and like everybody's looking at me, I'm staying in front of a room and he's at the phone because he was in Texas and we were in Orlando and he's like Can you repeat that number again? I was like 16,000, 16 000, and my boss, krista, she said yeah, this is, it's 16,000. This really long pause of like they didn't realize what. Like a gold mine in terms of inventory that they were on the panhandle, and the panhandle of Florida is the largest outside of Orlando in the entire state in terms of the breadth of Inventory, and so I think that that was just the moment when it was like, oh wait a minute. We really have underestimated what we could do. I think they initially thought we'll pick up a thousand units in the market, best Right. Yeah, so it really just opened up everybody's eyes to. Not only that, the fact that I knew that and I could pull these numbers and I knew where to go get these numbers because they didn't know, but just that there was out there and that they had somebody sitting Again on this golden goose that was just waiting to be, you know, hatch an egg and and it really. It really gave me kind of A fire in my belly, so to speak, to like work with the teams to be able to come up with the right Messaging and granted it. You know Anything like these big channels that are publicly traded companies. They've got a lot of protocols and things that can't be messed with. Where you know, like your condo world, you have the luxury of its private, you can do kind of the things you want and and make the changes that you see fit at the time. So there was a lot of things that had to happen, but it made me very passionate about the fact that my, my world around me, all the people that I knew and had worked with for 20 years, were now going to be in the spotlight and they were going to get the just Attention that they deserve. Yeah, and that, again, that was my big big moment of just saying, like, this is what is going to drive my passion For the rest of my career to make this market and the industry that I have been a part of Important and relevant and heard. So, yeah, that was, that was my big big moment.

Yeah, no, that's. That's so interesting too. And I mean, you think about it, like all the companies that are, like the condo worlds and the companies and golf shores and Panama City, when they started, we well, when we all started, there was no VRBO or Airbnb, right. I mean, like we had to build our own businesses based on repeat, repeat business and Truly traditional methods of advertising. And back back in the real early days, way before I was here, all we did was newspaper ads. Yeah, I mean, I've got copies of them. They're great but, it's. It's amazing to see that you know now this new breed of people coming into the short-term rental industry. I can't tell you how many times I hear this on podcast, people saying this you know, it's this new thing, it's not a new thing. Rentals holiday rentals have been around for decades. What is new is Airbnb and VRBO, but really neither of those channels are new. They've both have been around for quite a while at this point. But what's new is the attention. So it's interesting hearing even back then it's like that was the first wave that you experience had expedia of that attention really just coming to the forefront, and now we're experiencing it again. But it's, you know, it's, it's, I think we'll. We're gonna have some guests and you and I are gonna dive into that topic and similar ones a lot more on this podcast about the differences and you know how some of these traditional companies were built originally versus now and what we can learn from each other and how you know Homeowner acquisition is different and can be adapted. There's just so much to unravel there, but yeah and I think you know technology.

And then, of course, the interconnected world that we live in. You know this instantaneous access to. You know you can book I can book something from my desk to go to Asia tomorrow and travel. You know, for weeks and yeah, to be you had to go work with a travel agent and they had to gather information, you know so we live in this amazing world and vacation rentals. You know you alluded to it that it's funny that people say it's all new. It's not new it. We've been here. We've been raising our hand asking yeah, you know, hey, look at us. You know, yeah, the back of the. You know, kind of liken it to the. You know the, the shy girl in the back of the room. We've been here for a long time but people just hadn't paid attention. So this was one of the blessings that I think came out of COVID. Yeah, it was just that we were able to get a unified voice somewhat we're still working on it but shine a spotlight on this amazing industry that we work in. And so, again, our podcast is gonna highlight so many stories and so many facets of the industry that are what make it real and what make it fun. Yeah, yeah absolutely Well.

I think that was a good recap, annie, of you know who we are, where we've been, at least for now. I mean what? We'll continue to share more stories to give a little more Context to our backgrounds as this goes on. But I know you know I'm super excited about this. I think this is gonna be a lot of fun, I think we're gonna build a great community with it and we hope that all of our listeners will continue to listen. Where the next big thing we can announce we're gonna be at the women's conference in New Orleans a vacation rental women's conference and that is new in New Orleans December 1st and 2nd, and Annie and I will be doing a live with Alex and Annie on stage breakout session. So we're super excited about that and we'll have more details around it as it gets closer. That we'll be posting on social media.

Yeah, and so, on that note, make sure that you do. We talked about this. We're gonna be all over social we, we, we love to be part of that, so make sure that you follow us. We have a website that's up and you can sign up for updates and be part of our Membership list to get our e-blast and and we'll. We'll be doing various things throughout giveaways with some of our guests Along the way, but it's Alex and Annie podcast. Calm more on Facebook at Alex and Annie podcast and Alex, you have the other ones, the Instagram and LinkedIn.

I think. I think they're all the same. Yeah, alex and Annie. Yeah, or if you want to email us, it's Alex and Annie podcast at gmailcom. So Anyway yeah, I like anywhere you can find us, but and if you're ever unsure, just look for those cute bit mojis Looks just like us. I swear, yep, yeah, awesome, well, this has been so much fun today. Annie, I will see you on the next episode and we can't wait to connect and To see where this goes. So thank you everybody for listening for our very, very first episode.

Thanks for your support. We look forward to bringing you more great stories.

Yay, bye, guys, bye.