Bad Data, Bad Decisions: Why Your AI Is Only as Good as Your Data with John An of TechTape

John An 0:00

That's actually what people are doing with AI right now. They're asking all these questions because it's possible. But if the data is not clean, there are avoidable hallucinations, and having clean data is an avoidable hallucination, but they're allowing that to creep into their business.

Annie Holcombe 0:21

You're putting bad data in, you're gonna get bad data out.

John An 0:23

But then it spits out a very confident, beautifully looking graph that you're like, oh my God, this is happening, right? Like it's working.

Alex Husner 0:31

If you own a vacation rental management company, this one is for you. A lot of owners have thought about selling someday. Maybe not today, maybe not even this year, but eventually. And when that thought comes up, two questions usually stop people in their tracks.

Sponsor Spotlight: Monarch Collective

Alex Husner 0:44

What is my business actually worth? And what happens to the people, the homeowners, the reputation, and the brand that I spent years building? That's exactly why we want you to know about Monarch Collective. Monarch is built for local vacation rental brands that want to grow without losing what made them special in the first place. When Monarch comes into a new market, the local brand stays. And not just the name on the website. The team stays, the homeowner relationships stay, the reputation you earned in your own backyard stays. But now there's a much bigger platform behind it. You get paid for what you built and the parts of the business that drain so many owners. Finance, accounting, HR, legal, backend operations, they come off your plate. And instead of doing everything alone, you get the support and horsepower to keep growing. You can keep running the business as long as you want. You can step back when you're ready. There's not one version of what this has to look like. And here's the best part you don't have to be ready to sell to have the conversation. Even if you're just curious, Monarch will sit down with you, free and no strings attached, to help you understand what your business could be worth. No pressure to sell, no pressure to sell to them, just a real conversation with people who understand this industry and respect what local operators have built. So if you've ever wondered what your company could be worth, go find out. Visit gomonarch.com/slash partnerships. Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real woman of Vacation Rettles. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we are joined today by John Ahn, who is the CEO of TechTape and longtime friend of Annie and I's. John, it's so good to see you.

John An 2:18

It's so good to see you guys. It's been a long time coming for us.

Annie Holcombe 2:22

I was just about to say that. It's been a long time coming. So we actually did finally have you on the show after many years of talking, but it was almost this time two years ago, but we were in Florence, Italy. So came back to the US, and now we're having you on the show again. And so for those people that might not know John Ahn, why don't you give us a little introduction about you and your kind of your background and what you're doing now?

How John's experience as an operator led to TechTape

John An 2:43

Yeah, my name is John Ahn. And I actually entered into the short-term rental industry about 10 years ago. I stumbled upon it and started managing properties in Hawaii. So I started off as an operator, but I was living in New Jersey 5,000 miles away. And so living 5,000 miles away, I actually have to focus on the systems and the processes so that I knew what was going on in my business. I ended up switching KMS more than 15 times in that process.

Annie Holcombe 3:10

Wow. I didn't know that. You're glutten for punishment, aren't you? Yeah.

John An 3:15

I am a glutton for punishment. Um and you know, each time I thought the switchover would be amazing. Like it would solve all my problems, and then new problems would creep in. So I continued to operate Ohana Stay, which is the Hawaii properties, uh, with my wife Christina. But because of all the kind of you know, tech stack and everything, I actually started building tech solutions to make things work for my business. Because after 15 PMSs, I realized, you know, hopping more or more times wasn't going to solve the problem. And so by doing that, I started finding the solution to make the technology work for my business. Uh so that's my operator side. And so the way I took that and I created uh TechTape about five years ago, leveraging all the learnings from the PMSs, making all the tools work together. As a founder, that's what I created. And I focused on revenue management initially because that was a service that I could provide. And so that's kind of my story. And then I guess I'm an advocate for the industry. And so like some of the solutions that I'm creating, it's really, I think it can actually bring a lot of solve a lot of some of the problems that uh all the managers are facing. And so uh that's why I created Tep Tape in the first place.

Alex Husner 4:28

Yeah, and we've said this before on the show, John, but you know, we've there's plenty of founders that we've had that they've done something similar, that they saw a need and then they created something. And typically those end up being the companies that are really successful because it is created from a need and a true understanding of the industry. And normally if if you have a need and you can start to see, okay, other people also have this, you know, you might be on to something. So you've done a tremendous job over the years and you know, more on the revenue management side. But now you've got a new part of the business that we're gonna talk about today. So tell us a little bit about Tied Well by TechTape.

Introducing Tidewell and the problem it solves

John An 5:07

Yeah, so Tidewell by TechTape, it's kind of a homecoming because it was a concept that I had when I created TechTape in the first place. But basically Tidewell uh by TechTape, it's a read-only data foundation that translates the information and property manager's existing system. So you're not bringing on you know new systems to make this work, uh tips it into one consistent and the important part is operator defined. So you get to define what the data means. And then that way, whether it's a person looking at the data, whether it's reporting or whether you're throwing AI at it to get insights, you have a trusted source of data that aligns with your definition of your business. And that's the product that we're bringing to uh product service that we're bringing to the industry. So I'm really excited about this because it's something that I've been kind of slowly working on. And that was this was actually the foundation of how we ran our revenue management service. All the tools were kind of giving us the financers. So we aligned it to make it work. And so now we're kind of bringing this to the rest of the industry.

Annie Holcombe 6:11

So you're allowing essentially like all the data points to be tied together, right? And then you can customize it overlays on top of the PMS. Is that is that how this works? And then you you're extracting, so it's not actually pushing anything into the PMS, it's extracting it out to allow you to customize your reporting. Am I understanding that

Why vacation rental systems report different numbers

Annie Holcombe 6:31

correctly?

John An 6:31

Yes, this is read-only. And like you're saying, the reason why we're doing that is because all the tools of data are so fragmented that if we aligned it and then started pushing that data back to all the different tools, there's a lot of mess that can happen, right? So we want to just be the clean data source, but it's not just a PMS. Of course, we're bringing in the PMS data, but we're aligning it with the point solutions like your revenue management system, your accounting system, so that you're basically building what we call high fidelity data that represents the real world according to your definition. And the reason why I keep focusing on your definition is every business kind of they define what revenue means, right? Some folks include cleaning as part of their revenue, some folks don't because it's a pass-through. And so you get to define what that data is, and then that cascades throughout all your reporting so that it's that one consistent definition that you're defining for your business. Does that make sense?

Alex Husner 7:27

Yeah. And I I've got a couple different things I want to throw at you, John, of examples of conversations that are that are being had right now, of you know, now that people are so much more easily able to access and you know, extract data from different systems. You know, when when you were able to connect Claude to a lot of property management systems and to different tools, I think everyone was just like, oh my God, this is gonna be great. Like this is now I can solve all the world's problems. But the the problem that you're solving is, you know, that information does not necessarily, Claude is not necessarily understanding how the different data points depending on what each software is looking at. And, you know, what I've heard is that a lot of companies, when they start doing that, they realize, you know, there's there's the errors, there's information that is not correct and owners' uh responses or projections or you know, different reasons why they're trying to get the data to be able to make actionable either responses or draw insights from. And really the cleaning of the data, the health check that you give to it, that's truly the the strength of what you've built. Is that correct?

The risks of using AI with inconsistent data

John An 8:34

Exactly. It's it's basically the foundation on top of which you know you could do reporting or use claude or you know, chat GPT or whatnot. But the reason why people are running into these this issue is your PMS is doing the functionality, the features that it was built for, right? Coordinating the reservations and making sure that that's happening. And it has its definition of revenue. And then your uh revenue management system is trying to price it, and then so it has its own definition of revenue, and then your accounting system has yet another definition. And when the AI system kind of goes in and sees it's all called revenue, it's trying to guess at what that information might be, right? And every time you ask it, you might get a different answer from it. But then it splips out a very confident, beautifully looking graph that you're like, oh my god, this is happening, right? Like it's working. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So like that's what you need to know that the foundation is clean and you have to know that this represents my business. Yeah. And then you can have field day with you know AI to do all the analytics and everything that you need.

Alex Husner 9:40

And so you're you're essentially like a dashboard that's on top of everything, as far as how the the property managers would be using Tidewell.

John An 9:47

Right. So because we have the uh the data underlaying underlay, it can be a dashboard for human beings to you know to look at, or it can be for, you know, again, if you want to put your Claude and ask the question to Claude using that data rather than saying, go to my PMS and go to my RMS and go to my accounting and tell me what's going on in my business.

Alex Husner 10:09

Okay.

Annie Holcombe 10:09

Yeah, it makes sense. It sounds like this is more than just reporting for like revenue management stuff. It's like sounds like you could do operational reporting for like housekeeping maintenance, guest services. Like you could do any reporting that you've got data points within your PMS or any of these bolt-on systems that people have, you could create these dashboard reports, correct?

Finding operational opportunities through connected data

John An 10:29

Exactly. Of course, you could do the reports, but that's the beauty is that we're not going in saying here are the data points that we have. If you have your operation software data kind of aligned and here, I can give you an example if uh, you know, if this can help you. But each piece of data by itself might not sound exciting, right? So, for example, the way one of our clients uses uh this is on the tape chart on the you know ribbon calendar, they put the cleaner information on each of the reservations rather than the guest information, right? Which cleaner is assigned, just so that that piece of information is there. And then they also put the flight information for when the guest's guest's flight, the next guest flight is coming in, right? By having those right next to each other, each each data point by itself is kind of, you know, it's not that interesting. But if you have that side by side and then the flight is delayed, your team is just right there and they see, oh, there's, you know, we have four extra hours that we didn't have, maybe we can call our maintenance crew, get them in and take care of, you know, a small maintenance issue that actually they were gonna do after the next checkout and block out a day, right? And by doing that, they were actually able to reduce the number of blocked maintenance nights by I want to say about like 10%, right? Maybe not huge, but that's real revenue that's there because the two pieces of information that they decided to put together allowed their team just to have that information in front of them. Does that make sense? It's like you bring the metrics that's important to you or your team, and you bring that together, and then that starts surfacing opportunities that otherwise it's like too burdensome to go look up the flight information, go find out who the cleaner is, and then you just kind of let that opportunity pass, right?

Annie Holcombe 12:18

So it's truly, it's truly like whatever your imagination is, you can build this reporting out. It's you can you can customize it to tell you whatever you want to, right?

John An 12:27

Yeah, and you know I don't want to make it sound like it's the Cheesecake Factory.

Alex Husner 12:34

Yeah, right.

John An 12:36

But in many ways, that's actually what people are doing with AI right now, right? They're asking all these questions because it's possible to do that. But if the data is not clean, what happens is there are avoidable hallucinations, right? And having clean data is an avoidable hallucination, but they're allowing that to creep into their business and making, you know, decisions that may not be the right decision. I mean, these uh the factor of how how off the revenue number can be, it could be about like by 15, 20%, depending on which tool you're looking at. And so that's in many companies, that's like profitability or not being profitable for a month or a quarter. Um, for sure. Yeah. So that that's really the that's one of the problems that we're trying to solve.

Annie Holcombe 13:22

Well, and I think there's there's always been that statement of like, and I won't say it the the full way, but the poop in, poop out. You know, if you've got you're putting bad data in, you're gonna get bad data out. So kind of want to make sure that that's all clean. So that's that's very cool to be able to customize things because I think that a lot of times people struggle with the reporting that is shown to them through their PMS or through their data provider. They're like, what if it could do this? You know, and they have a question and they're like, the provider can't customize it to the level that somebody wants. So this allows that ability to kind of take all of these great tools and make them be more customized to what they

Why consistent definitions of revenue and occupancy matter

Annie Holcombe 13:58

want.

John An 13:58

It's it's it's really interesting because when you say occupancy, everyone kind of just has their own understanding of what they believe occupancy is. But depending on whether you're thinking calendar month versus arrival month, right? Depending on whether you include uh include block nights or not block nights, there's so many ways that occupancy can be. And depending on how you define it, you assume everybody else believes that in that same room in that conversation, right? And that's why we built this so that it can be customized, so that it's your definition rather than, oh, my PMS does the rival, you know, the arrival calendar, my RMS does the calendar calendar, right? There's so many nuances, and I think that's why founders who actually operate go in with the nuances, understanding the nuances. And I think that's really where the value of this uh, you know, of Tidewell really comes in.

Alex Husner 14:53

Yeah, and and I think, you know, for years we've all gotten used to just accepting the phrase it's directionally accurate. So you're like, okay, well, I mean, it could be you know plus or minus 20%, but it's it's going in the right direction, whether it's up or down. Um and that that's that's just kind of what we've we've all been used to. And I think that applies to, okay, well, you know, the conversion or the different way that something is is called in a different system. It's a little bit different here. And it's like there's so many caveats. So it's like, you know, if you're trying to make quick decisions, you've got to have a full, like, you know, table of contents of like, remember this first before you make the decision based on the data. So essentially you're you're eliminating that so they can actually look at the data, make smart decisions quickly, and then act on them. One of the things I wanted to ask, John, and this conversation for sure is has been going on a lot this year, and towards the end of last year, that at the conferences we're hearing from the the larger PE groups how they're building data lakes. And you had a a really great way of describing it in another conversation to us of a data bodega or a data data mart. Explain to the listeners, maybe too, what that means by the data lake, and then what your version of that means or your approach to it, what

Making enterprise-level data infrastructure accessible to smaller operators

Alex Husner 16:09

it means.

John An 16:09

So you know, the term data warehouse and data lake, you know, it's all it's everywhere. And those are typically for like big, massive, you know, aggregation of lots and lots of data across the industry, typically or across large organizations. And it's important, and this is this gets added. The reason why this is a data mart or you know, data bodega, it's it's like a small, you know, small bodega, small grocery store. We're not solving every possible data storage need uh that any company could ever need, but we do understand how the short-term rental industry works, and then for the mid to smaller size operators, it's hard to have a data team or data infrastructure to build this kind of data lake, data bodega, right? And so what we're doing, what we're saying is what we're providing is a small-scale version of what larger operators or you know, larger PE groups would build so that even your five-unit operator or 20, 50-unit operator can have this clean data for their business, like the PE groups may be creating, or you know, the large operators are creating as well. So we're we're not trying to go into this as like we're gonna solve every data problem in the short-term mental industry. But as a property manager, as an operator, you get the data clarity of your business, defined the way you see your business. And then you could start making clear decisions. And then if you look at like large, you know, hotel companies or airline companies, like that is what they have built over the years, and that's how they're able to unleash AI tools and things of that nature right now. And our industry needs something like that, and we don't want everyone having to reinvent the wheel every time, you know, someone wants clean data. Some of these AI workflows that uh, you know, a lot of the more savvy operators are building, it's amazing and it's great, but they're actually creating a much messier data problem for themselves down the road if it's not clean from the beginning. Because they're just like, here's this piece of data and here's another piece of data. Let me just like make that work. And it's kind of like happening at ad hoc. And that actually can create a lot of data fidelity problems down the road as you get more properties or as you know, as the data volume grows.

Annie Holcombe 18:22

I think that's an interesting point because I've talked to a few people that have gone through some PMS migrations as of late. And there's always the challenge of getting extracting the data from one PMS, putting it into the new PMS, and making sure that it is all correct. And a lot of times it could just be a matter of a filter wasn't turned on right, so it didn't import correctly, a field got put into a wrong segmentation, like just there's so many things that could go wrong. What do you think if somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, uh, this tool could probably help me out. But to your point of like having the right data and good data from the beginning, what should they do to kind of do like clean it up and do good housekeeping so that when they do add on Tidewell, they know that they're going to be getting good reporting and everything can be set up clean and correct from the start.

Maintaining historical data through PMS migrations

John An 19:11

On their PMS, there's actually nothing that they need to do because we bring that data in from the PMS. We are defining initially as accommodation revenue is accommodation revenue, cleaning fee is cleaning fee, pet fee is pet fee, right? So we're breaking down each piece of that puzzle so that it comes in. And whether you know you're using one PMS or another PMS, it all means the same thing once that data comes into the tide well. Then there's a layer where they can go in and say, oh, no, no, we don't include you know cleaning as part of our revenue. So you click it down, so it's you know it disappears from you know your revenue column. And then you're like, you know what? We actually do include taxes for whatever reason, right? And then you know, we could treat that as an expense. So you can reconfigure that uh within Tidewell. But getting to your point, so right now we're not writing back to any, you know, any of the tools because, like you said, like you you can mess things up, and we don't want to do that inadvertently. But the beauty is because we've aligned everything, we have a client who transitioned from one TMS to another. And their historic TMS data all aligns seamlessly with their new, like we were able to find where the overlap was and deduplicate it. And so within Tidewell, they have this continual history from the prior migration into their, you know, onto their new system. And what most uh folks who have migrated, they typically you know have downloaded a CSV of their entire, you know, however many years of history. It's stored nicely on a disk somewhere, but it's not accessible. You can't run trends on it. It's just there that if you ever need to pull that data, you just have peace of mind that your history is still there. With Tidewell, you can go back to your three, you know, three, four years back and run reports and you know, see the trends that were happening then versus what's happening now, because all that data is seen and aligned.

Alex Husner 21:11

Yeah, no, that that makes sense for sure. And probably helps property managers ease the apprehension to switch systems in a way too. I mean, knowing that it just because it was one thing in another system, now they're gonna be able to still understand what that is in the new system. Hey guys, real quick,

Sponsor Spotlight: CraftedStays

Alex Husner 21:27

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Improving maintenance reporting with connected data

Alex Husner 23:09

helps on that side?

John An 23:10

We have an operator who's kind of beta testing this uh this aspect. The way they have structured uh the incentives for their maintenance crew was how long it takes them from reporting an issue to close it out. And they have their own internal system for how that bonus structure works. But it's not this straight, you know, it was reported here and then it got finished two weeks later because, you know, there was a reservation in between. There are different factors that happen uh in between all of that. So they are using this to start to refine how their bonus structure can be kind of automatically calculated out between their maintenance logs and their PMS uh reservation data. Typically took them about half a week uh every month to get to that report, to the point where it was just like, you know what, we we trust that you did a good job, and you know, we're gonna implement that bonus. So they're trying to refine that to a point where it's like very systematic and your maintenance log information with your PMS uh information, making that together, allows them to track performance and that's how they're compensating their maintenance staff. I'm not sure if that was a little too technical, but that that's the that's kind of the way different pieces are being put together, not just the PMS data.

Annie Holcombe 24:26

I feel like Lance Stitcher is listening, going, I my brain is like thinking about all the ways I could be using this because he's always one that wants all these different reports. So I feel like Lance, if you're listening, you're you're someone you need to take a look at John's tool here. This this is pretty amazing. Um I'll hit him up. I'll hit him up and next week. Yeah. Um on that, like if somebody's thinking, I need revenue management, I need reporting, do they have to engage with TechTape in order to have Tidewell, or do they stand alone? Like, what does that look like for an operator?

John An 24:57

You don't have to do both, right? So if you're good with your revenue management and everything, and you just want to start cleaning out and organizing your data so that you can use it in your business, sign up for Tidewell, and then you know, you get your PMS information in and point solutions in, and you operate off of that. If you do want a done-for-you revenue management uh service, you can of course add on to it. Basically, Tidewell is how we did a lot of the revenue management uh process on the back end all these years. So we're just basically unlocking that for people who want the revenue management service as well that we've been providing for uh many years now. But they do stand alone as services. So it's a lot hard between these two. It's not you have to take both or you can only get one.

Alex Husner 25:43

Was this your original vision, John? I mean, like I I know I think it was similar, but like if you could go back to four years ago or so when we saw you in Chicago at BRMA, like did you know that you would be at this point in the future?

John An 25:56

This is gonna be the funny part. If you look at the name TechTape, at that point there were lots of technologies that just didn't actually talk to each other. And so back then, the idea was we were able to make the technology talk to each other to just execute actions, right? That was the initial concept of TechTech. A lot of the industry really did not feel that pain at that point of the you know fragmented uh tech. And so it was a very conscious decision to focus on revenue management, which was, you know, a core skill set that we had. Now, why are we calling this tide well? And I know that not TechTape. So, one, TechTape is known for revenue management more or less more in the industry. So we wanted to kind of not rebrand that. The meaning behind tide well is, you know, like the tide comes in and out, you know, in the natural world, and it's like very steady, it's reliable. You know it's gonna come, you know it's gonna uh, you know, go out on a very consistent schedule. That's what tide well is for your business. It's like that reliable, steady data flow within your business. And so that's why we decided to uh call this tide well.

Annie Holcombe 27:03

Uh and see, I know it's not spelled the way I was thinking, but I was thinking like it's tied well together. Like you tied it together. Oh, yeah. That's how I was coming at it. Lots of different ways you can do it.

John An 27:13

Yeah. If if you want, uh I had uh I had someone who said, oh, does it, you know, like tie the laundry detergent so you're cleaning the data?

Alex Husner 27:22

So I I asked that question. It was kind of a leading question, but because we talk about this on the show a lot, that it's like, you know, this Steve Jobs quote, you can't connect the dots until you're further ahead to look back and know like all those dots really, you know, they were coming into place for a reason that you wouldn't necessarily know until you got to that point in the future. But I think you saw the writing on the wall that like you saw the dots that were going to be coming uh in a way that, you know, AI, I'm sure, has you know blown everybody's mind. That I don't know that you could have necessarily predicted that at that point, but I mean you did see the bigger picture. And I think that's the important part here of like you you saw the need, you recognized there was not really anybody that was tackling it, and and now you're able to take all the learnings of the time it's taken to build it and now apply it. But are there specific softwares that you work with in this or and what happens if somebody's on a platform that you have not had experience working with?

Integrating existing software and data sources

John An 28:18

So because of TechTape, uh, we have official API integration with most all of the major PMSs in the United States. So you we should be able to work with almost anyone. We are structuring this so that even if we we have not integrated or made a partnership with a uh with a vendor, that the property manager, the operator has a method of getting the data into Tidewell, so that it's not reliant on how fast can we get those integrations in, right? So we're trying to make it as agnostic as possible, automating as much as possible so that it's not, you know, every week someone has to go in and like upload something into it. But we have a mechanism by which, you know, you have your data. Okay, let's figure out where that data fits in into your business, and then get that flowing into Tidewell. We we did not want our capacity to either build partnerships or to build integrations to be the something block of whether someone can use Tidewell or not. So I'm not saying every tool is possible, but we're building some flexible infrastructure so that even if there's not uh integration, you should be able to get your data in. Even if it's your own spreadsheet that you've been using for years and years, we should be able to format that into a format that you can bring into uh I will. And then Alex, I just want to point you were saying how I had noticed this issue and you know, worked on it. There were times along the way, even my wife, I love her dearly, where this data integration was not really, it was not paying the bills, right? So it's like, why do you keep it? Why are we keeping this as a service on our website? It's confusing it's confusing people, right? But it was something that I was like, I know it's coming because like it's getting more and more complex and complicated and more fragmented. And so, you know, I did keep it up there. And we we've always had a you know, a small number of clients who used the integration uh service, and that's also helped us to build it to a point where now we know, like, okay, this works, and that's why we're able to uh you know get this out uh to the industry at the time. Makes sense.

Annie Holcombe 30:28

What do you think we're gonna see in terms of the technology tying together through whether it be Tidewell or maybe PMS is finally understanding that they need to allow for some more customization within? I think that's where the challenge is, is that people just don't have the ability to customize. So do you see an opportunity for people or PMSs to work closer with Tidewell to make Tidewell a layer of a PMS offering? Maybe these, maybe specifically, I would think there's an opportunity with these the smaller host profile, um, these operators that only have five or six properties that maybe don't need an enterprise system. Um, do you think there's an opportunity for you to be like an automatic offering within a PMS so they don't have to actually build something out that's customized?

Building a trustworthy foundation for AI automation

John An 31:11

I would love that. You know, again, this was very early days of releasing it, but I think you're right. Like software vendors, providers are gonna have to one way or another allow folks to customize or make it, you know, work for their business. And that's why, you know, there are lots of MCPs for all the tools that are out there so that people can access their data. So, yes, I do see that that direction coming. The challenge that I'm seeing right now is a lot of the tools and solutions are focused around our system, our AI will take action for you before you even know that you need to take the action, which is important. But for me as a business owner, I actually need to know and trust that that action is the right action at that time. You have to have some way of knowing that it's it's basing that action on the right information or the right data. And so for us, it's not just about the customization. It's actually about getting your data right, the way you trust it, the way you understand it. Then you can layer on whether it's the PMS or other third-party solutions that can take the action for you rather than us assuming, well, we know the industry. So this is how, you know, this is the action that it should take. You know, put it in, press the button, and then, you know, you lose the nuances of the individual businesses.

Alex Husner 32:29

Yeah. And I I think the interesting thing that I've I've heard of some of these groups that they're going out and they're making their own, you know, custom data lakes or solutions to solve essentially what you're solving, John, is that you could go hire a developer or Microsoft or you know, a company or person from outside the industry to try and build something like this. But the really important part is that you get the industry and your team understands the industry so well. And I think that's that's you know, kind of loops back to what we talked about in the beginning. I mean, when something is developed by people that are actually using the technology and building for themselves, it's a very different outcome than somebody who just had an idea and is looking at another industry and saying, oh, they could probably use this. But you know, that's not the case with what you've built. And I think for anybody who's interested in and being able to see a better look into what's truly happening within the business. And if they're frustrated with having to generate multiple reports and then pin them up on a wall and then get somebody else to help interpret it, you know, and you know, do a little dance and scratch their head, like you kind of pull it all together here in a way that's you're speaking the right language. So uh I I'm excited to see more of where this goes and and just talk to more of your your clients that come onto this and and see you know what it does for the business. Yeah, no, it's uh I I've danced a lot using your analogy.

John An 33:52

I've danced this way and I've danced that way, I've done the Pango, right? But um the framing of calendar month versus arrival month is someone in you know, in hospitality and hotels will understand it. But if you're coming from just the software world, you know, that's a nuance that you actually probably would miss in the first round, right? And that has huge implications on the accuracy of your data. So, yes, it's the nuances that actually differentiate uh the tool. Not just my not just tidewall, but like all like you said, the in general, yeah. The founder-led tools tend to have understand the nuances much better than some of the products where a founder was trying to find a solution to uh a problem to solve, if that makes sense.

Annie Holcombe 34:35

Yeah, I think there's too many people out there that are trying to solve for a problem that they assume exists, but they're not asking. And I I think we're seeing that more and more with AI. And I I know we Alex and I talked about it a lot on the show recently is that the number of people that reach out via LinkedIn to tell you that they've got a solution to your problem and they don't even know what your problem is, and they're not from the industry. So that's likely that the length of time it's going to take you to explain what your actual problem is, you could have just done it yourself at that point. You know, it's like they're not helping anybody. And so I think this is a situation where people, it's really helpful to know that you're working with somebody that understands your pain points. They're in the business, they've done it, they they understand the nuance of the numbers, they they understand the different ways you can slice it and dice it. They understand what owners want, they understand what you as an operator want. And so I think that that's something that you have going for yourself. That a lot of these newer companies that are, I just think they're like, you know, flash in the pan kind of groups right now. But um I think it's it speaks to, you know, what this the strength that Tidewell has is because you understand the business probably better than most anybody that has a technology company at this point, I would say.

John An 35:46

I wouldn't go that far, but yes, we we have played with a lot of the technology. The way that different PMSs call different things is just like mind-boggling. It's you know, like it's just like, oh, really? That's how you treat, you know, XYZ. But, you know, it all makes sense to say they started building and it kind of added another data field, and like that's that's how it evolved, right? And so that's you know, it's it's a fun puzzle to solve, uh, from at least because I'm such a geek.

Annie Holcombe 36:14

Well, it's never it's never a boring puzzle, that's for sure. So it always gives you some challenge. It gives you some challenge. Well, John, it's exciting. We've known you for a long time, and and you your passion for the industry overall is is palpable from meeting you the very first time. I think that everybody sees, you know, you are have always been out for what's the best thing for everyone, not just what's best for John. And and and I think that that just speaks to you as an operator and it comes through in everything that you do. So, whatever we can do to help educate people about Tidewell and to bring it, you know, to more operators and help educate, we're excited to be able to help you do that.

John An 36:52

Oh, I really appreciate it. I appreciate the long-term friendship that you know that we've had that the years, and you guys are you know advanced of the industry all the time too, right? So definitely a big super fan of uh Alex and Annie.

Annie Holcombe 37:06

Well, we asked lots of questions.

Alex Husner 37:08

So it's always we just asked we didn't have to go all the way to Italy to get this interview in. So that's the good thing.

unknown 37:14

Yeah.

Alex Husner 37:14

Well, John, if anybody wants to reach out, uh I'm gonna ask you where to go, but before that, tell us what the what the process is. Like when you first meet with somebody, do you go through all the systems that they have? Like, what does that first initial meeting look like?

John An 37:29

The first initial meeting is actually at the baseline, we need to connect a PMS. Uh, we are able to work directly with just Airbnb, if that's you know, that's all you're connected to. So we need that. And we have a process for you know integrating fairly, you know, very straightforward. And then the process is not to throw the kitchen sink at it. Cleaning data is actually kind of want to take a step-by-step process. So really identifying what's your biggest data problem, issue that you want to solve. And then we would layer on one, you know, one point solution at a time so that we're not playing with a jumble of a lot of data, but you know, working through that. Now, it's not it's not as slow as it might sound. If it's a if it's a solution that we've worked with, it's a lot faster. If it's not, we will work with you to get that data into tied. Well, as you solve one problem, it frees your mind, it frees your time, whether it's yours or your teams, then you could start actually solving the next problem and the next problem. So it starts uh snowballing really fast after that first solution that you solve, that first problem that you solve. So then over time you're you're adding, you know, you can layer on that next solution, next solution. And that that's the approach. We're not trying to say, what's all your tech staff and let's stump it all into one, you know, one jumble at once.

Alex Husner 38:46

Makes sense. Um, if somebody wants to start down this journey with you, what's the best way for them to get started?

John An 38:53

The best way uh is to, well, I can be reached at by email, uh john.on at textcape.com. Schedule a call uh with us and we talk through your pain points, what you know, what your biggest pain points are, and then we will get you on boarded. As much as we want to make this uh, you know, like just click a button and everything gets done for you. There are so many nuances that at this point we really do need to kind of take it step by step to build out that uh that process for you. And then I'm also on LinkedIn, so you can always find me on LinkedIn and our website. I think uh we have it, getkick.com. So that's uh what they can find me.

Annie Holcombe 39:30

And at any VRMA event near you, John is on the board with me, so he's very active and at every event. And as I joke, find John, get a John selfie, a gel fie, and then you can prove that you've been at all the conferences this year.

John An 39:43

I'm at the STIF conference right now, right?

Annie Holcombe 39:45

So yeah, we're not there, so we didn't get a chance to, but we'll see you, we'll see you in Nashville.

Alex Husner 39:50

Yeah, we will awesome. Well, looking forward to it, John, and and best of luck with the the rest of this year and rolling this out to many clients, I'm sure. And if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandanypodcast.com. Until next time, thanks everybody.