Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tech is ruling the world right now in our space. AI is ruling the world. Data is ruling the world. So you got to stay up on it, you know what I mean? Here's my take on. On that as a whole is AI as a whole is if you don't lean into it and get into it and start using it, you're going to get left behind, number one. And number two, why the hell wouldn't you?
[00:00:23] Short Term Rental Management, fresh back from Burma. Going to do a recap for you today. On today's episode. I'm glad to be here. It was a quick out and back. It was an easy direct flight from my tiny little beach town to Nashville Music City where I lived for a long time. And it was Vermo Vacation Rental Management Association.
[00:00:44] This is the biggest property management conference that exists as far as vacation rentals. And it has been going on for a very long time. This was the 41st year that they've been doing it.
[00:01:00] Very well organized. It was at the Music City center where I've been to many conferences in the past. And that's also where they have the expo for the Nashville Marathon which I have run more times than I wish I had because it is very hard. It is probably one of the most difficult marathons I've done. And I used to live there.
[00:01:20] Very hilly, lots and lots and lots of hills, but it's a ball. It's a great time. But anyway, Music City center, very well organized. It appeared to be extremely well attended.
[00:01:31] Everybody was there anybody who's anybody in the vacation rental space.
[00:01:36] Now keep in mind, my show is generally going to be, you know, a little better than half owner operator listeners. So most people listening to my show actually own the home.
[00:01:49] That is not the case at verma.
[00:01:52] These are property management companies and a lot of times it's a large company managing hundreds of units and they are just sending representatives to this event, et cetera. And there are people out there. One thing I learned, I've been to so many conferences now. I have learned there are people that just like to go to conferences.
[00:02:14] It's just a social aspect. There's drinking involved in dining and hotels and you know, it's, it's work but it's partying at the same time. And there's a lot of people that like that. There's people that like the whole trade so trade show circuit, like they're on tour.
[00:02:31] And the reason I bring that up because I'm not necessarily one of those people. I enjoy it. I do. I'm always Glad that I went to these conferences, but I don't know that it's, you know, like really my thing, you know.
[00:02:47] So I got to see some old friends, got to see Uncle P, my buddy Pavan, he's a great dude and his wife Tracy. Wonderful to see them. We went to Robert's Restaurant, Western World, which is one of the greatest bars on the planet.
[00:03:00] I don't drink, but we still had a great time hanging out and listening to some live music, et cetera.
[00:03:06] So Nashville has changed. I'm going to start with that. It has. I lived there for eight years, had had a child there and it has changed. The city itself has grown exponentially and I've only been gone for six or seven years.
[00:03:25] It is a big city now. Wow.
[00:03:29] I also didn't know I had a direct flight all the time from Destin. So I'm going to be taking advantage of that more often because it was less than an hour to get there, easy airport to easy airport. So I really enjoyed that. It's a great place for a conference. If you ever have an interest in a conference and it happens to be in Nashville at the Music City Center, I would encourage you to go simply because that is a great situation they have there. Stay at the Omni. Would recommend you stay at the Omni and, and have a ball. There's bars everywhere right there. It's a great time, you know.
[00:04:08] So Vermont is again property managers.
[00:04:12] It's what. What it was originally. It's in the name vacation rental managers.
[00:04:18] And my biggest takeaway from Burma was my first time there, by the way, which I'm shocked. I don't know why.
[00:04:26] But tech, tech, tech, tech is ruling the world right now. Every single booth was AI and tech and it's really eye opening.
[00:04:43] And I was also. I'm very proud of myself because I feel like we are very cutting edge with all the tech here at short term Rental management and the short term shop, we are way on top of it.
[00:04:53] There was very few companies there that I was not aware of and could have given you a speech on what they do.
[00:05:03] So proud of myself staying cutting edge in my field after all these years. You know, most people are in a, in some certain business for X amount of time and they get bored, they move on to something else. Not me.
[00:05:16] I'm here. I'm sucked in.
[00:05:18] I've been doing this for, I don't know, we're going on probably close to 15 years at this point. So. Very grateful and, and, and I'm very proud that I Knew what was going on. I was, you know, I didn't have to stop at these, I did stop at the booths. We were the media for the event and we are, are going to be releasing clips on our YouTube channel and also mostly on a lot on Instagram as well and also YouTube shorts. So be on the lookout for those. You can find us at the short term shop.
[00:05:54] But I didn't have to stop at the booths. I already knew what they were doing. I already had a relationship with a lot of these people which was great and it was great to catch up with some folks and, and see some, some cool people in the space. You know like Jay from Host Buddy, he's a great dude. Love running into him and, and the guy from Hostaway, he's awesome. You know, long haired dude, loves metal.
[00:06:17] So anyway, tech is ruling the world right now in our space. AI is ruling the world, Data is ruling the world.
[00:06:29] So you gotta stay up on it, you know what I mean? Like, here's my take on, on that as a whole is AI as a whole is if you don't lean into it and get into it and start using it, you're going to get left behind, number one. And number two, why the hell wouldn't you?
[00:06:47] For instance, I just upgraded my personal calendar. I live and die by my calendar because I have no memory. So if it's not on my calendar, I won't know about it.
[00:06:58] So I, I realized that my calendar is a little outdated.
[00:07:04] Did what I needed it to, but it was starting to get a little funky and glitchy and it's like, you know, nobody's paying attention to this. Whoever owns this thing is not paying any attention to it. I need to go find something better. So I did some research, I looked around. Sure enough, there's several personal calendar softwares out there that are operating with AI.
[00:07:22] So I found one that worked great for me. There was several actually really good options for it. And I landed on the one. I tried a few of them landed on the one that was perfect for me with going back and forth with ChatGPT asking questions and it was very accurate. And bam. Ended up with this tiny little app nobody's ever heard of it. Couldn't even hardly find it in the app Store and it was brand new and it's perfect and it has made my day better.
[00:07:49] Now I do realize to a certain extent I'm preaching to the choir. If you are listening to this show. I lowered my desk yesterday. Let me fix that. If you are listening to this show, you're putting in the effort. So I'm probably, you know, this might be falling on. On deaf ears here, because you're like, well, yeah, Luke, obviously I'm keeping up on things. I'm listening to your damn show, you know, and I'm no, I'm no expert. I'm. I'm certainly not, you know, the youngest guy on the planet anymore. And I'm not fresh out of college and hungry and crushing it. I mean, I'll always be hungry. I gotta stay hungry, right? It's like, who's that? Twisted sister? Stay hungry.
[00:08:28] But, yeah. Anyway, all over the place as usual this morning.
[00:08:36] I'll blame it on the coffee, which I can't. I can't do that. I can't blame it on the coffee because it's decaf.
[00:08:48] Anyway, lean into the AI, please, please. And that's why I also, I would like to encourage you to switch to Spotify.
[00:08:58] Spotify has AI and it is a better software than the other options out there. I was an Apple guy for a long time, and I haven't used Apple in the past year or so. But when I left it to go to Spotify, it was falling behind. I thought you, you know, and Spotify. I can click a little button, like when I get my weekly playlist every Monday by weekly. And this is music. It's not related to what we're talking about here, but it is because there's podcasts on there as well.
[00:09:24] My Discover Weekly comes out every Monday, and it's new music that the software that the AI thinks I'm going to like. And I'll be honest, it's weird because this week on Monday, I click the play button on my run.
[00:09:36] I try to listen to at least a half of my run on books and. Or podcasts, mostly books. And then my second half of the run, I'll like. If I. If I really needs a little more motivation, get into it, I'll switch to music, you know, like with a third, two thirds in.
[00:09:52] It's my. That's my style, you know, which I would like to elaborate on that, if you don't mind. Again, I'm a little all over the place this morning, but.
[00:10:05] Running is selfish. It really is. You know, it's. It's a good thing to do because you're. You're keeping yourself, you know, fit and sharp and you're using your body and legs. And I have friends that. I have lots of friends that say, I don't know how you run, because I've been running every day For a very long time. And they say, I don't know how you do it. You're blowing your knees out.
[00:10:29] You know, I don't even talk about it because most people don't care. They don't understand it. They think it's dumb, you know, and they don't like, you know, they don't even want to know, you know, So I just don't bring it up unless I happen to know somebody's a runner.
[00:10:43] And I get that all the time. Luke, you're going to blow your knees out.
[00:10:48] What are you doing?
[00:10:49] And I'm sitting here like, well, how many guys my age do you know that aren't complaining about their knees?
[00:10:55] You know what I mean? You're going to end up with fake knees. I ran into a lady yesterday that she works at the doggy daycare, and she had two brand new hips.
[00:11:05] Her knees, I think they were knees, actually. And she wasn't a runner, you know, she was a little older. But I'm you. I thought, the way I look at it is you can use it or lose it, baby. You know, Like, I don't mind having a few stairs in the house. Use it or lose it. What are you gonna do? You go. You get to the point where you know how you old people don't want to go up and down stairs. Why? Because you're lazy. Let's go.
[00:11:35] So anyway, my point is, is that on my run, which is very selfish, I have to use that time to educate myself is how I feel.
[00:11:46] Because I'm taking it now again, I'm doing this when everybody else is sleeping.
[00:11:53] But, you know, it is personal time and I feel that running's not good enough. I need to educate myself as well. So I listen to books. Anyway, long story short, Spotify's got it going on. They got the podcast, the music, the books, all in one place for one subscription. Apple Music. I used to have to go to Audible pay for the book and have, you know, two credits per month. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:12:21] It's all right there on Spotify. It's awesome. And back to my. I'm see, I'm coming full circle here. Just bear with me. My. My weekly music Discover Weekly on Spotify.
[00:12:35] This was the first week since I've switched to Spotify that I thought the music wasn't any good.
[00:12:41] You know, it was pretty. It was like, ah, this song stinks. Skip it. And I'm out of my run and I'm like, skip it. You know, there's certain. I listen to Metal, mostly. And there's certain types of metal I'm not really into. Like the ones where, like, if they start singing like high pitched, like, I don't want to name any names, but Lincoln park. Okay, fine, I'll name a name like that. Like, and they start singing like that on the, on the chorus. That's not my thing, so I'll skip it. And I noticed I was skipping and skipping and skipping. So finally I opened up the app and I changed a couple of buttons in the AI and it worked and boom, it was playing what I like to hear again, you know, so.
[00:13:20] And maybe Apple has that stuff now. I don't. Again, I'm not here to name names, but my point is, is we are living in an era where things are changing very quickly with everything in our lives, and I would like to encourage you to go ahead and lean into that. You know, go, go. The way you should be looking at all this stuff is go find the better version of what you're using right now. That's going to make your life better.
[00:13:53] You know, I listen to a lot of books and music. It's a big part of my life.
[00:13:58] And one day, through the recommendation of a friend of mine, I went and found a better software to do that with, you know, and I couldn't be happier.
[00:14:11] I used to think Spotify was like this weird thing that, like, yeah, I don't know, you know, it's not Apple, so.
[00:14:17] And it seems like it was kind of like an Android thing or whatever, and I'm very much an Apple guy and. And then about a year or two ago, it's been a while now, I, I just.
[00:14:29] Actually, I think what it was is somebody sent me a playlist, a Spotify playlist, and I couldn't listen to it.
[00:14:34] And it was a close friend of mine and I was like, well, I want to check this out. So I got a subscription and I fell in, man. I. I was, I've been all in ever since. So.
[00:14:44] Same thing with this calendar.
[00:14:47] You know, my calendar system was broken and I didn't even really notice it. And then somebody that works for me was like, man, I'm sick of waiting for this calendar to load. Does this every day now. And I was like, wait a minute, you're right, I gotta fix this. This is not good. There's no. So I went to the calendar website and on the desktop and there was no button on the bottom right hand corner to ask questions. And I was like, what is this?
[00:15:11] It's gotta go. I'm to the point now where if it doesn't have a little button in the bottom right hand corner that I can ask questions, it's gotta go.
[00:15:18] I need to get to the point right now. I don't want to wait for a human that probably doesn't even know what they're talking about, you know, and then you start thinking, well, people are losing their jobs over this. No, they're not.
[00:15:30] No, they're not. If you lean into it and do it right, you're gonna.
[00:15:34] You're gonna make more money. You know, it's a perfect example. I asked my.
[00:15:39] I'm back to the running. Here we go. And I'm going to come full circle, circle back to Verma, but back to the running.
[00:15:45] There's an app called Strava, which is like high tech, you know, like, people that really run use Strava. And it connects to your phone, I mean, your earphone and your watch, which I have the fanciest running watch on the planet. Normally, I don't like to wear tech watches to work, but I forgot to change it today. So I got my tech watch on Garmin Phoenix, whatever the hell it is. 9.
[00:16:11] So this morning, after having such. Such success with this calendar, I looked it up on ChatGPT. Does Strava have AI? And it said no. And I was surprised because Strava is a very techy app.
[00:16:27] It does have AI, but you can't, like, ask it questions. But it does have cloud mcp. So today after the show, I'm going to connect my Strava to my clot and ask it questions. What could I be doing better on this run? What do you think my best chances are for my fin. My marathon finish time in a week and a half, what do you think my best case scenario for a finish time is?
[00:16:50] And then I started thinking to myself, oh, my God, this is going to wipe out all the running coaches. Because that's what. That's what, you know, losers do. They start thinking like that. And then I was like, wait a minute. No, that's not what's going to happen. The really good running coaches are going to lean into this and figure out a way to communicate with you and the AI at the same time and have even more success. In other words, if you're a running coach, you better lean into that AI hard as hell right now. Get your hands on every single thing that you can and give. Give AI to your clients as well.
[00:17:23] You know what I mean? If I found a running coach that could do all that for me and help Me with that, I'd be in.
[00:17:30] I personally am a running coach with two, I have two running certificates. They're actually back there somewhere on the floor, not doing a whole lot with them. But running coaches are great and you know what I mean? So like.
[00:17:47] Lean into it, learn what you're doing and find the best options that are out there to help you do your job better and live your life better. And that's what Verma. You know, I walked in there and I'm like, oh my God, this is all tech. This is all AI. Every booth was AI Everybody. You know, they're trying to sell you stuff, obviously, but it's all the best and the biggest in the business. And every one of them was techie, techie, techie.
[00:18:13] And that's where we're living right now, you know, so I'm grateful to be on the forefront of that, especially my late 40s keeping up, up to date on it, you know. And anyway, besides that, Verma was great in general. Had a lot of.
[00:18:29] I only caught two lectures, unfortunately. We got kind of in and out, get back. I don't like to be away from the kids. So we were, you know, I was on two airplanes in 24 hours from one location back to the original location and. But I did catch a couple of lectures with my buddy and they were great. And it's nice to see these folks working at scale, you know, that's another thing I learned is that if you're, if you're really into this and you, and you bought a house and that's how you got into this and you are looking for a shift in your life. I see that all the time and I preach about it all the time.
[00:19:06] Jump right in, be a property manager. There's tons of them out there. Go to the next Vermo. You'll enjoy it, you know, and it'll really open your eyes. Oh my God. There's tons of people doing this.
[00:19:15] There's a whole room full of people managing hundreds of units and the goal is to build it up and sell it or build it up and buy more and build it up even more.
[00:19:28] Most of them are selling or buying, you know, that's kind of the goal.
[00:19:34] But anyway, had a great time, Verma. And they're doing the next one. They said they're going to do Denver. So, you know, it's cold in Denver. I don't know about all that, but I think we're gonna go.
[00:19:47] Really enjoyed it. So if you're thinking about going to a conference, go. I know you know, it's not for everybody. I do think it's a good idea. Everybody at the conference is going to be trying to sell you something and that's okay. Just get over it. Whatever, who cares?
[00:20:02] Who cares?
[00:20:04] If they're any good at what they're selling, then, then what they're teaching you might be worth know listening. I took notes and I, I had some great ideas while sitting there listening to this stuff, you know, and the biggest and best thing that I can tell you is what I already said. Lean into the AI and everything in your life.
[00:20:26] I made my mother in law put chat GPT on her phone. And then, and then I had a huge breakthrough because I'm like, man, she's not going to use it. She's not going to use it.
[00:20:36] But I told her, I said, here, if you start using this, you're gonna, you'll learn, you'll, you'll gain three years of your life. You'll get three extra years because you're staying up to date and staying in the loop.
[00:20:47] And then what I did was I opened up, I brought her over to the fr. She likes to cook. So I brought her to the fridge, opened up the fridge. I said, open up that app I downloaded on your phone. Take a picture, Took a picture of the fridge. And then I said, talk to it. I hit the voice button and I said, can you please give me some simple recipes to make with what you see in this picture?
[00:21:10] And then she was like, wow, you know, gave her like 10 different recipes.
[00:21:17] So get out there and find ways to make your life better. That's the, that's the moral of the story. I've got this new calendar now, this new calendar app. It's badass. I'm loving it.
[00:21:31] So if you have things in your life that are annoying you or just kind of complacent or you know, no progress or just, you know, like things that you haven't worked on in a while, shame on you. Let's get it together.
[00:21:45] Book, subject, book on the subject as usual. I've recommended this book millions of times and everybody that's ever read it has thanked me.
[00:21:52] Dan Heath upstream.
[00:21:55] If you have something in your life that is not working the way you want it to get upstream of the issue and fix it.
[00:22:04] I believe it was written with his brother. I want to make sure that I give the correct credit there.
[00:22:12] Nope, it's just Dan. Sometimes Dan writes books with his brother. I've read a lot of their books, great books. But the upstream, that's got to be an older book by now.
[00:22:25] When did that come out?
[00:22:29] Doesn't say. But anyway, the Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen. Can't recommend it enough. I talk about that book all the time. It was really a nice little game changer for me. Came out in 2020 so it's not that old.
[00:22:45] Almost seven years now I guess. But anyway, I love you. Verma was great. I highly recommend you check it out next year. I will probably be there, but you never know. I love you.
[00:22:57] Short Term Rental Management if you'd like to come on. If you're a property manager with 200 units, please email us, it's guesttrmshow.com and also please leave me 5 stars on Spotify. I would really appreciate that.
[00:23:12] And get out there and update your softwares and get off your ass. Let's do this.
[00:23:19] Oh yeah, don't overthink it.
