SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Live Let Thrive, a podcast about the Airbnb life, the share economy, and everything in between. Here are your hosts, Micah and Steve.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Hello, hello, hello.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

And welcome back to another exciting episode of Live Let Drive.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

What's up, Micah Man?

SPEAKER_04 0:22

I am chillin', Stevie Stacks. How you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:24

I'm good, man. This is episode 137 of your favorite Airbnb STR VRBO. Um, you know, share economy stuff podcast, mostly heavy on the STR. But um we have some special guests today, don't we?

SPEAKER_04 0:39

Yes, we do. We have Ryland and Arthur Culker. If you don't know who Arthur is, I've been talking about him the last few weeks. He is the uh the owner of the creator, co-founder of Stafi, what I've been bragging about. And we also have Rylan on, and we will jump into what he does with his with Stafi and what he does with his business. Welcome them to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah. Welcome. Awesome. Good to be here. Rylan, your last name is Nelson. You got it. Okay, because he's he made it sound like y'all were a couple or something. Ryland and Arthur Coker. Oh, or brothers or something. Anyways, um, so yeah, we're excited to have you all on. Stay Fi. Uh Micah's been talking a lot about this um Sta Fi thing. Could you um you mind telling us what Stafi is, Arthur?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, so I'll give you a little history. Um, so I originally had a digital marketing company and we worked with a ton of short-term rental managers like Ryland. Um, and all of our customers we work with, they had this persistent issue of where it was difficult to collect information from their guests so that they could market to them after the stay. So, as you guys know, Airbnb, VRBO, sometimes maybe you're able to get an email from the booker, but that's becoming even harder and harder. Um, and you definitely don't have access to data from all the other guests in the reservation, so like the five, six, seven, eight other people that are in that party. So we want to develop a solution so you could collect emails, names, even phone numbers from everyone staying in the properties. And the way that we do that is through branded Wi-Fi splash pages. So just like at an airport or hotel or coffee shop, where you have to log in through a branded splash page to access the Wi-Fi. All our customers use it to make sure all of their guests log in through a similar type of page in order to access the Wi-Fi.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Okay, cool. Yeah, because I I I've um I work at an airline, so I f I fly a lot, and every airport, they always, if you want to use their Wi-Fi, you got to log into their thing, and then they send you to their page. It's kind of like a you know, commercial first. And then you can start using their Wi-Fi, and then it'll boot you off in about, you know, 15, 20 minutes, and you have to do it all over again. And so I didn't know, I guess, yeah, they were collecting my my emails the whole time, email information the whole time, huh?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Yeah, I mean they use it for different different purposes, right? But for our customers, you know, uh getting everyone's email uh in your Airbnb party means that you can contact them all during and after the stay to make sure they come back and book with you directly again.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

Love it. So so, Rylan, you um you said you have quite a few listings and you use uh Stafi. I use it too, but I think you use it at a very large scale. Uh can you kind of go over what how what your operation is and how you've been uh implementing Stafi?

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah, so um we're up here in Fernie in Canada. Um over the past four years, uh we've grown from the Airbnb in my condo to 100 listings. And yeah, we've encountered a few problems uh in our growth for sure. And one of them was, you know, as as Arthur talks about, we do want to drive the direct bookings, you know, it's better for the guests, it's better for us, it's better for everybody. And how can we communicate to them next time? Hey, you should book with us. Uh, we were uh you know asking on Airbnb after they booked, hey, what's your email just in case Airbnb goes down? Can we get that for it from you? Because as we know, you can't get it before they book or after they book. It's it's kind of a short window to get that. And people didn't want to always give it up either. Uh, and you did only get that one email address. You didn't get your whole party who, you know, uh that's going to be staying in your in your place. So another thing was we had a lot of problems with our Wi-Fi in these units. They're the passwords are weird, the um you know, the Wi-Fi system that they have is just not working very well, or you know, you get these middle of the night calls, and oh, you just have to unplug it and plug it back in and all these issues. And I was trying to find, you know, what's an easier way? I don't want to do the tacky, you know, put the you know, sticker on the fridge with the Wi-Fi information, which ends up, you know, changing, and then it's you know the wrong information. And I tried these, I don't know if you've ever seen them, there's those little like wooden blocks, and you're supposed to like be able to like just tap your phone on it and auto-join the network. I thought that was super cool. I ordered like six of those things, and they just they did not do what I wanted them to do. And they weren't even that cheap. So uh I was down in New Orleans and bumped into Arthur and the Stafied program, and I was like, hey, this is this could be the solution. I just plug in these wireless access points, we can you know eliminate the whole password thing, I can monitor the internet uptime. You know, before a guest gets there, we can recognize that there's a problem with the Wi-Fi and address it before they get there. And um, yeah, so I ordered up a few units, we trialed them in some some buildings, and we've we've scaled, we don't have them in all of our listings yet. I've kind of, you know, I'm working my way up there. We're up to about 40 uh of the Stafi units in our properties. And it's some yes, we've collected so many emails, and our guests are loving uh you know getting information about how to book Direct next time at a lower price. And the support, uh you know, Arthur likes to talk about his marketing side of thing and how that's the big benefit, but for Ma, that's great. Uh, but the Wi-Fi support issues uh has complete, you know, cut we don't have any of those call-outs anymore. Uh guests are experiencing better Wi-Fi. The this hardware is actually amazing. It's you know, we have multi-unit buildings, and so they're all meshing together, and the guests can wander around in the building and still be on the same Wi-Fi network. Um it's been yeah, super valuable. Uh I can't speak more highly of it.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

So with you having 40 of them, um do you know what percentage like are your direct bookings up to now?

SPEAKER_03 6:49

Um, you know, I'm really more I haven't pushed the direct bookings as strongly as I as I want to. Um I'm not I'm not confident in my direct booking website. Uh I think maybe I need to go through some of your podcasts and see uh you know where I can get a better one. So we have I'm kind of I'm ready to do that. Uh so right now it's kind of been um more passive marketing, you know, people just getting our brand out there when people log in, they see it. Um and we are building that database that we do market to from time to time when there's you know some availability we want to fill. But um I don't have those metrics about how how much it's increased the direct booking. Uh because and even if I did, I don't think it would really speak to how much better it could be.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

So so right um Rylan, how does it work? I I'm a guest. I go check in and um and I want to you know get on my laptop and get on the get on the internet. So what do I what do I have to do?

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Yeah, so you know, we keep our uh check-in instruction messages super uh straightforward uh with just the pertinent information, uh Wi-Fi information being that right at the top next to the access code. Uh and it says look for the Fernydirect.ca open network, and you don't need a password, you just need to enter your your email name and email address to gain access. Um it's we've all experienced varying uh levels of this kind of service in airports and uh coffee shops. Uh this one's super reliable, it doesn't boot you off after 15 minutes. Um I think there's a 30-day timeout that Arthur kind of defaults these two.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

That's 30 days.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

Yeah. Um so we yeah, then they're connected. Um and it's super easy. Everybody just uh pops in their email address and is automatically connected. We do have, you know, there is the odd device that doesn't like the splash page, some sort of weird um, you know, gaming console or kids device or something like that. And when we encounter those situations, uh we do have an admin, a regular uh password-protected admin network that we do give the guests uh to connect those problem devices that may exist, uh, but that's pretty few and far between.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Now, Arthur, um, here I guess here's what comes to mind, because you said anybody can hop on as long as they put on their email address. If I'm if I'm if I'm urging, like I'm doing an arbitrage of an apartment right now. So and there's units that are really close by you as soon as you pull up Wi-Fi, you can see everybody's Wi-Fi. Now, what's stopping from the neighbors from hopping on on my Wi-Fi, you know, dragging dragging down the speed.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, so when you go to create splash pages in the customer portal, you can place a password there if you'd like. So we typically recommend in a multi-unit situation, multifamily where you don't control all the units, then I would recommend having a password. If you're doing single-family homes or like in Ryland's case, he manages the whole building, then you know, a password's not really necessary. So it just depends what your situation is and whether you're gonna have a lot of other individuals around. I do see some people, they place an access point like by a pool, like if they're in a complex. And in that case, they actually want everyone to join the Wi-Fi, even if they're staying at competitors' rental units, and they actually use that as a way to collect everyone's information and provide that service. You have a customer in Aspen that uses the technology in their office, which has like a shop in it. So while we don't forwardly market our service for like retail or other types of hospitality locations, we've definitely seen some crossover where customers that also operate those have placed them in those types of locations, as there's no reason why it wouldn't also work there.

SPEAKER_04 10:39

I purposely set mine up so anybody can connect to it so I can market to them because it you have to sign in, you get your email and phone number, and the people next door or whatever, they they gotta put all that information in there. You can market to them. That's what I love about it.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, so it it just depends what your situation is, and then you know, the splash page builder, you can have as many splash pages as you want. So, Ryland, he likes to have one splash page for all his properties. Other rental managers have a splash page for every different house, and that way you can control which ones have passwords and which ones don't.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

I can add uh something, you know, about this around how our staff uh can, you know, they connect to this network once and then their devices recognized um in all of our properties. So our cleaner staff or myself going around, my my phones are just automatically connecting to those networks, uh, which is super valuable. Um another thing that I do, because we do not use passwords, is um we I can go through the you know devices that have been connected and see when they were first connected and kind of figure out like, hey, there hasn't been somebody staying in this place for you know 20 nights, and they're you this person's clearly not a guest, it's probably the neighbor. You can go and ban that device through the admin interface. So yeah, there's there's if you the pass passwords aren't uh aren't fun for guests or uh our administration staff to or support staff for guests to deal with. So if we can avoid it at all costs, uh you know there's other ways to deal with the people poaching your Wi-Fi.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah. Ryan's a more active user, so he takes some additional steps that I would say most customers don't. But uh he can you definitely have the power to do that. And you can monitor, you have a live view of all your Wi-Fi networks. So if you ever suspect there's too many guests in a property, you get a noise alert, you want to see what's happening there, you have the ability to look and log into the dashboard and get a better sense of what's happening in in the property at any time.

SPEAKER_04 12:48

Oh, cool. So, Rylan, with you having you said you had yeah, like you have a whole building. I think Arthur just said, like you may have a whole building. Um you put multiple access points in there for speed, or how do you handle that?

SPEAKER_03 13:01

Yeah, this this building's a bit unique. It's got central uh hardwire internet that's provided, and each individual unit just needs to plug in an access point. So it's super easy for us to just plug the Stafi in, and every unit um that we manage. We have about uh 30 in this building. And yeah, we've every unit has it and they're all meshed together. So if one goes down, or if you know, maybe they get a better signal from you know the other unit in the back corner bedroom, and they'll the devices will automatically just figure out which is the best one to connect to. Um so yeah, much better Wi-Fi coverage for for our guests.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, so in that case, it's just like he set it up like a hotel sets up the Wi-Fi. So there's like a central switch in the building, and it's providing kind of a business class wireless internet to all the or wired internet to all the units, then you plug the access points in, they all mesh with each other, and then no matter if the units are meshed or not, your device will always recognize it as the same Wi-Fi network. So that's why you can even go from a one house to another house, and your device will continue to stay on the same Wi-Fi network. Uh you can also, like a lot of our customers, uh not like Ryland, but they may have a multifamily, like face, say five townhomes next to each other that are all have shared walls that have their own individual internet subscriptions. They'll actually kind of have a wired, wireless smash wired, wireless smash wired setup. So especially for people that master lease uh kind of units all next to each other, there is a great opportunity to actually save on your Wi-Fi or internet bill.

SPEAKER_04 14:39

Just by using that one access point. Okay, I like that.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

All right, I had a question for for you, Arthur and it's it it sounds like a strange question, and I'm not a super technical technology guy. Um But skip tracing, is that possible with with y'all's with y'all's um stay? What what do you mean by like skip tracing? I guess I guess that's what it's called. It's okay, for example, I look up something on uh on the internet, and then I go to my Facebook or I go to my I IG, and then all of a sudden I see all these commercials about that thing I looked up. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

I don't know if that's retarget retargeted ads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that possible with your with your technology? Yeah, it actually so we're actually launching um next week. Well, you could always do that, and I can explain how that works. So the way that you would retarget someone on Facebook or Instagram is you would need a Facebook ad ads account, and you would create something called a Facebook pixel in your ads account. And if you place that pixel on any web page, you can then retarget those folks with an ad. And you can create some parameters around anyone the last 30 days on this page. Let's retarget them with an ad on Facebook, Instagram, and a few other properties that Facebook owns. Um we're about to launch the ability to insert the Facebook pixel into one of the splash pages so that you could retarget everyone with through those channels that comes through your splash page. Um although a lot of our customers have that pixel sitting on their own website. Um so in that case, we redirect all the traffic to your website and then you can retarget them based on that. But we're gonna add um the ability to place it in the actual splash page as well very soon.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Wow, that's game changer right there.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah, and we'll have some kind of like tutorial documentation around how to create a Facebook ad and a retargeting audience and a Facebook pixel, as we recognize you know, most people in the industry, especially people who aren't operating large businesses, they're not gonna have a specialized digital marketing person that would know you know how to do all those things. So uh we're planning to have that you know helping documentation as well. It's not hard to do uh with some basic instructions.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

That's cool because um because yeah, I I I definitely want to look into getting one of these things. And I know this whole show, I don't want it to sound like a like an infomercial or something. Yeah. Because we we you know Micah reached out to you guys because he loves the product, and we're just you know, we're just giving the our our listeners some some great information how they can improve, especially because people, you know, after COVID, everybody got pissed off at Airbnb because they canceled all of our bookings, whatever. And so that's why we want to, there's a there's a big migration to to direct bookings, and that's why what y'all y'all's product is so important. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah, I'll just say like the number one thing, I mean, there's a few things. So we can just talk about direct bookings broadly. I think a lot of people, you know, they don't realize how easy it is to have a direct booking website. So uh, you know, that's one of the myths that we like to dispel. You don't need to invest in an agency to create one for you, because just about every property management system now, whether you use Logify, Guestie, Owner Res, you know, get uh there's so many, uh they all come with like a pre-baked templated website. Like I know, Rylan, which one do you use again?

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Yeah, fantastic stay.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah, fantastic stay.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

Collect the properties you want on it and put it live. It was yeah, five minutes. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, so you just, you know, you can yeah, your porter's another great one. Yeah, so you know, you can use like go to Fiverr or Upwork, hire some graphic designer, they can make you a logo, some basic stuff for a few hundred bucks, and you can pretty much get all the assets you need to have a direct booking site. And then of course, those channel managers are gonna also connect with Airbnb and Verbo and Booking.com. And then direct booking just becomes one of your kind of options that you have to push, you know, both new guests and repeat guests. Uh so that's definitely the first thing. And we, you know, Rick typically would recommend most customers, if they're very eager, would kind of take the step of having their own branded website before they sign up for our service. And then I say the number, the second thing that we see that people need help with is on the email marketing side. Uh, because I think people get a little intimidated, or maybe they've, you know, it's intermittent because they hired someone to do it part-time, and that person leaves their company, and so they're not sending regular email uh marketing messages. Uh and so we have some services to help people with that as well. Uh and I'm happy to talk a little bit more about that too, just so uh and give some good pointers around how to email market effectively.

SPEAKER_04 19:27

I have a couple things on that. One, I love your integration with MailGimp, and I haven't been on in a while. Do you guys have an integration with like uh a texting company or is that in the works, or do you guys have one?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

That's in the works. The texting is a little uh invasive, right? So we're really looking at, you know, uh how do we integrate in a way where instead of it just like with email marketing, I think one of the issues we had is like we integrate with MailChimp, and then people are like, well, what do I do with MailChimp? Because not a lot of people, maybe they haven't used the product. Do they want to set up a campaign, a template, do they want to do an automation series, which we definitely recommend? Uh I think with text marketing, we're gonna kind of pre-bake it a little more. So it's kind of like you can send a welcome text, you can send like a marketing text after three months uh with a promotion code, so that we're offering a few different options as opposed to like just having it like you can text them anything whenever you want. Uh, because then I think people might uh abuse it or spam people, and we want to make sure that it's you know a really well-defined product that people understand.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

And it's in the message that their um social security number is expired and they need to follow through.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, right. Yeah, because if you abuse text marketing, people are just gonna unsubscribe. And I'm sure you get a ton of spam. I get so many spam texts now, it's kind of gotten out of hand. Um, so we just want to be really thoughtful about how we approach that.

SPEAKER_04 20:56

I'm happy you brought that up because one of the things I'm struggling with because I do collect their phone number. And I was like, I was kind of iffy about it. I'm like, should I collect people's phone number? I mean, but people have been putting it in, they don't mind. But okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

I know I know Betsy Pepine, who you had on your your podcast earlier, she uses a product called Easy Texting, and she uploads all the phone numbers she collects into the product. And I know she does some text marketing, so you can definitely collect phone numbers through the platform and use them in the way that you want to. Um, but we definitely want to have some native texting uh abilities or features. I think the other one that texting could be really good for is review generation. So, like an automated, you know, how is your stay one through five. And if they put five, then we can send a follow up text, be like, hey, review us on you know Google, Facebook, you know, one of the places where anyone can review you, not just the the booker. So the booker you still want to send to Airbnb or VRBO or those platforms, but for where you can get open uh, you know, Google's a really good one since that will also help your. search marketing results uh for your own website. Um, you know, that's one that we want to help people collect reviews for because most guests won't review there on their own unless if they have something bad to say.

SPEAKER_04 22:13

Oh yeah. And by the way, a quick Airbnb update, they no longer give you the option to send emails. So that's gone. The little email thing, yeah, it's wiped.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

They just didn't Yeah, they're gonna move everything in their own platform.

SPEAKER_04 22:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Now especially now they're going public, they can't they need to become as profitable as quickly as possible. So all leakage needs to stop.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

I would I would go real quick and kind of on topic but like like something that happened to me earlier this um a few days ago because because I got uh I'm using a a company to to do my to do my listing for me like for the first time you know I've always done it my my own stuff so I'm like okay 15 15% they're gonna run everything. All right let's see let's see how they do. Anyways they were trying they were talking to one of the guests and trying the long story short he they they wanted him to cancel because this big booking came up and so they're saying hey you know you can you cancel and then you can book one of our other places blah blah blah and and they're saying well just go to our website and book it and they're doing all this in the Airbnb chat and I'm like they're gonna get me kicked off of Airbnb man. And so um so yeah definitely I would not have I I would I was just sitting there watching it all like oh crap I hope I don't get busted man and there's in there yeah go to this you know give us a call or go to this and you can book directly with us to save money I was like oh my god so yeah I think Airbnb does not want that and uh they haven't told me nothing yet oh yeah I say be careful because they're cracking down on that I know two or three people they've been banned and they've been coming to telling me about it. Yeah be careful with that uh they want to fire them I'll I'll I have a top they they got me a year long booking so I'm still I'm still I'm happy with them anyways um back back on topic real real quick um so so the the big question how much does this this technology cost and like is there different levels and like for for different uses?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah so we're we're totally self-service which is great so anyone can sign up from one property to a thousand properties um and set up the system so uh and then we just have different price tiers depending on how many units are active uh in the portal so you purchase the equipment which ranges from 89 to 109 dollars and then there's a monthly cost that ranges anywhere from four to six dollars an access point so you know like a typical customer with 10 properties would be paying you know 60 bucks a month for the service and so do you also do a thing like like the ring doorbell you know it's it's six bucks a month or if you buy for the whole year it's only thirty dollars. We haven't done yearly plans yet we probably will in the future right now the good thing about the monthly is that you only pay for when it's active so like we have a customer in New England and they're in like in Maine and the houses shut down for seven months of the year although I think they're extending longer now. So they can just literally deactivate it in the portal and then they'll stop getting charged. So we we're I'd say we're very vacation rental manager friendly or you get a long-term three months lease and you're just gonna give them the Wi-Fi password because they shouldn't be using a guest portal because they're a long term stay. Oh I can just deactivate Stay if I not pay for it and then reactivate it when it becomes short term again. So we we you know we want it to be as flexible as possible so that it fits with anyone that's moving between short, medium long term.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

So the so the $89 or the hundred to the $109 for the for the actual hardware um let's say I have I have like three units in the same apartment complex close to each other do I just need to buy one and I could use it for all three?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

It that's a big it depends question. Okay. Like how big are the units, what's the building type? We have a long long range access point uh that's the $109 one that I would say gives you 20 to 30% more coverage than a traditional router. So if your current ISP router kind of works for all three then getting this device you could feel pretty confident it would work well. But there's a lot about the buildings and the walls that are gonna determine how far any Wi-Fi signal extends.

SPEAKER_04 26:25

The one I think you were referring to like directly across the hall I think it would work with one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

The key thing is if you're gonna share internet you just got to make sure that that one subscription like your ISP, 18 T, Comcast, whoever it is, you have high quality internet. Because you can imagine if you have three units and all three are streaming at the same time you know it's good if your main ISP connection is fiber or hundred meg plus if you're on a bad DSL line and you have three families staying there all trying to stream for their kids like it could get bad rough if they're all sharing. So we definitely recommend if you're gonna downsize connections make sure the one that you have is the best that you can get for that that wherever you're operating.

SPEAKER_04 27:13

Good to know good to know so Rylan I guess I gotta get back to you because I you you have a hundred listings and I definitely want to know how you got started. So how how did you get started in the short-term rental space?

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Oh um I I always say I accidentally started this business. Um it's I you know I used to I had a condo I had used to have roommates you know that was the way to be able to afford your your first place and um that was what it was and you know then I I heard about this Airbnb thing and I was like hey let's try this let's put up let's make this one room it was uh this condo has a lock off so it's like a bedroom it's like a hotel room that is uh locked off from the main condo with its own exterior entrance so it was like perfect let's turn this into an Airbnb create the listing take some photos it just takes off like I am making way more money than I ever thought I was gonna do and I was also working a lot more than I ever thought I was gonna have to do um you know turning over that room every day every other day and I started trying to you know look for some cleaning companies and they're like oh it's a two hour minimum and you know so eventually you know then the upstairs neighbor found out I was running this Airbnb and he's like oh here can you run an Airbnb for me and I'm like I can barely run mine it's like it's too busy. So uh then I stumbled across some software for mine and you know got comfortable with that and obviously the software was designed for you know add as many different listings as you want to and then I did say to my neighbor I was like hey I I can let's add yours to my system and you know I've got this one cleaner person who can help us out and um that kind of is how it all started and then yeah we just started everybody word of mouth was I was doing this thing and you know I was well positioned in this market as there's there was you know some one or two like super old school property management companies that nobody liked uh that people just weren't even bothering with listing their properties with these guys because they just they did they tried it but they had a bad experience they didn't make any money because the fees were too high. So you know those old school guys with the 50 to 60% management plans um yeah you don't make any money with that uh bring your own toilet paper and sheets right yeah exactly right well you should you probably you should give us some color about the town that you're located in because it's uh well yeah Fernie's a small town as well you know I'm from here I'm fairly well known as well it's that all helps with the whole word of mouth thing um it's a ski town um mountain biking fly fishing you know it's about 5,000 full-time residents um ballooning to you know over 10,000 when it's uh well with including tourists on peak peak seasons it is a tourist destination um and yeah we've we've just really taken off with um yeah up to 100 listings now we're the largest accommodation provider in Fernie um you know we have a lot of larger uh you know three four bedroom condos that you know when you count those and how many you know pillows you have we we are bigger than any hotel that exists here we're a small town we don't have any that many big hotels um yeah so we've just been uh you know dealing with growth for the past four years and um recognizing where we're having challenges and trying to find solutions you know and that's where stay fi really fit into this with um yeah the Wi-Fi issues uh that uh my cat is here to visit okay I thought it was mine um let's just hope she doesn't get on the keyboard but uh yeah you know why I don't know what your ISPs are like and the kind of router access points that they provide but they're generally horrible up in Canada like the ISPs are good they they offer solid we have lots of good fiber here but the routers were just like dying all the time or needed to be unplugged all the time and it was you know so that's kind of how we started rolling out the stafi was we we identified a problem router uh or the the Wi-Fi that it's providing and we just replugged the stafi unit into the router and it completely solves all the problems. So the problem wasn't with the router it was actually with the Wi-Fi that it was serving not being as you know uh commercial grade as the StaFi product is and yeah so plugging these in um you know we all have smart devices well a lot of us have smart devices in our Airbnbs um and we program them all and we set them up to the ISPs Wi-Fi weird password thing and um then their router dies and we have to get a new one and then we have to reprogram all the devices. And this goes two ways you know Arthur likes to talk yes you can keep that old Wi-Fi network and keep all of your existing configurations to that. And that's that's an easy way to get started. But now we set everything up on the StaFi and even if we have to replace the StaFi unit which we haven't um all of the smart devices will continue to work on that with um with any device with the same network configurations. So yeah this has been one of the keys to allowing us to grow like we have reducing our administrative costs um with our staff support and improving our guest uh guest experience and eventually when uh when I like my direct booking website better being able to um yeah really drive more direct bookings uh with this big email list that we're growing wow I yeah I had to look up where Fernie was I'm like I have Airbnbs quite north you in Canmore in Ban yeah is there yeah yeah um I just I had to look I'm like oh Fernie I didn't know where it was but it's yeah it's Edmonton so it's like right north to you in Canmore and Banff I have Airbnbs up there.

SPEAKER_04 33:32

Yeah definitely Ski Town.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah totally ski town and is pretty big you know uh covet here has been a big plus um for uh bookings you know we're in that outside of the you know Calgary larger markets and we just had the busiest we have like 95% occupancy that we ran all of August and then we ran like 85% in September which is starting to get our in our off season and I just looked at October here we are on October 2nd we're already at 60% occupancy for this month which is usually like ghost town nobody around and this is uh yeah it's it's been busy and also you're not too far from the what from the border right so people might cross drive over and you know not not right now not right now that's closed closed I didn't know oh yeah it is never mind yeah I mean so that's that's another thing is people in uh Canada they basically can't leave the country um you know without a two week quarantine when they come back so uh we're getting a ton of new people and you know they they live three hours away but we're getting all these bookings oh I've never been to Ferni before um and so yeah it's gonna be really important that you know this is their first time to Fernie they're booking with us we're getting their email addresses and we're gonna turn those into repeat guests with direct bucket yeah I'd say yeah right now a lot of our customers demand's not an issue in their markets so we just encourage people like well you definitely want to make sure while you're at such high occupancy that you're collecting all the information you can because eventually you know hotels will become popular again and uh you'll want to have you know data on everyone that stayed with you during this period.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

So real quick Ryan um so you're collecting all this information you you you don't have a lot of confidence in your direct booking site yet but are you at least using it like sending them you're sending them emails hey you know come stay with us again you know do you offer them like a discount even though you the they'll book through Airbnb or whatever are you doing stuff like that?

SPEAKER_03 35:42

No I mean we we're not uh we're not doing all the things that I want to do uh just yet our our direct booking website does work there's just especially with you know I think the biggest one of the biggest reasons uh that I'm not pushing it right now well it we're running like super high occupancy rates we don't really need to um but uh is um yeah there's our direct booking website doesn't have weekly and monthly discounts built in and that's been uh very popular um so it's it requires a whole bunch more manual kind of interaction with them to manually send them a special discount kind of offer and um yeah like Arthur says is uh we're we're you know getting ready to be able to you know really push and launch this marketing campaign when when we need to I think is the big one right now.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Micah how could he fix that?

SPEAKER_04 36:36

Uh your porter will let you do that. But on the flip side when you just said the manual processing I the my my thing I'm trying to figure out with your reporter is when I do get direct bookings they come in through email and I'm like okay I have to set up the code for the for the all that that's the one thing like the person whoever some software person out there if you want to make a lot of money figure out how to automate direct bookings. It might be Arthur but I don't know you know whoever it is you want to make a lot of money that's the big thing right now with short-term rentals.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

And that's um you know doing I don't do anything unless I know I can do it really well. I think that's you know another key to our success is you know people c you know we have a hundred places and we're mobile uh coffee's always coffee's been a big challenge it's like we can't and I I I don't feel like I can do it right you know with so we just don't do it. We make sure there's good coffee makers there. But you know I tried to offer coffee and then it was like oh you didn't there's no cream and then it's like okay well then you have the cream and then it's like oh there's no tea and oh I only need sweet and well and so it just turns into this like complaints. Yeah exactly so you know the direct booking thing I'm not pushing it super hard right now people are still finding us um just because of brand awareness of course uh with stay fi um that we didn't have before and they are making bookings and you know the one night stays and three night stays anything under a week is good. But yeah just with not being able to have those monthly discounts or if it's not automated and doesn't fit into the way everything else works you know there's a lot of like Airbnb connect for smart locks and then that doesn't work with your direct booking so it's so we're just you know cautiously kind of waiting into this and until we have it like super solid then we're gonna be able to you know really start pushing it. But don't don't do it until you know you can do it really well and and stay five you know there you know Arthur's been you know he's thought yeah text marketing you know it might we're we're gonna make sure we do it right and I think that's why he's being successful he's he's what he does uh he's doing it right so do y'all do y'all make a mean poutine over there? I think that's the Quebec thing right it's kind of why you know like potatoes gravy and cheese it's yeah cheese curds. Cheese curds squeaky it's delicious.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

You ever had poutine Micah?

SPEAKER_04 39:10

No I haven't I'm gonna have to go next time I'm in in Canada I'll have to look into it oh it's delicious.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

Gotta yeah yeah they I went to Vancouver one time and they have all these you know it's a walking around city they had all these little like poutine cafes like all kinds of different ones I was like oh crap yeah I'm in poutine heaven yeah so the you said you're is the the state Edmonton where you're at uh it was the the province is British Columbia uh we're we're in the same province as Vancouver uh we're in the Rocky Mountains we're about an hour north of uh whitefish in Montana whitefish is a popular ski area in Montana and yeah we're about an hour from there and we're another hour from the Alberta border which is where Calgary and Edmonton are um in that province. Okay because that's where they had the the the NHL um playoffs and um and um Stanley Cup right in Edmonton yeah yeah I think so I am I'm a bad Canadian when it comes to hockey well our Dallas Stars were in it for the for the final so we almost yeah we didn't win it all but we got we got close so yeah Ryland's more of a professional skier so he can talk about that that career of his life too so yeah it's all it's all it's all downhill from here so you're out of um Arthur you're out of um New Orleans or y'all y'all met in New Orleans?

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Yeah we met at the Verma International Conference in New Orleans uh which was great it was super fun and I think it was one of the last big conferences uh before they all got canceled this year so I'm glad we had that opportunity uh I highly recommend next time they were gonna do it in Florida this year but obviously they got moved so hopefully it will be back next year.

SPEAKER_04 40:59

Yeah Verma I missed the island to go to it was a good time and New Orleans is a great that was a great location to have it so made a bunch of money though because a lot of those people stayed in my Airbnbs but yeah I wanted to go next time so uh so where are you out of then Arthur?

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Normally I'm in New York City right now I'm in California but I'll be back in New York in October so did you leave New York because of COVID or you just uh sort of I did for a while so um this was a crazy time so very crazy time so yeah this has um been a good episode is this is like um I think because we hear a lot about about Stay Fi and we've had we have guests from the show like one guest in particular um AJ Anthony uh I'm sorry uh what's AJ's name I don't know AJ the one that cuts yards also the one he's always on Facebook Adam Adam Johnson Adam James Adam Johnson Adam Johnson he's getting he's getting like 80% of his of his bookings directly and he uses Stafi correct I think he could Stay Fi I'm at the point now where I don't know all my customers' names like I was really good like the first 150 I knew everyone I knew all their problems I spoke to all of them but now we're getting to the point where I'm like yeah I probably yeah that's a good problem yeah no I mean it was inevitable so you know like as Ryland said like our whole philosophy is if you're gonna do it you have to do it well and you have to research the user the property manager so that it works well for them.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

So we don't just like throw stuff out into the ether and see how it sticks. And I see that I've worked with a lot of other software companies in the vacation rental space property management systems not all of them I would say are uh so diligent when they release new features so we like to be take a more conservative approach and really understand the user experience both the guest and the property manager so that it works well for them.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

And I agree with you I I really think the idea of Stay Fi was just genius on your part you know because I mean that was one thing we've been talking about on this podcast. Okay we got to go direct everything got canceled how do we collect yes information we can't do it through Airbnb you know people were thinking of text I had signed up for slick text and then I ran into Betsy she told me about this I'm like this is pure genius and I the very next day I think I had talked to you or it wasn't very very quickly after.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Yeah we we like it like the core product needs to be simple like the simplicity of the splash page is easy and then it's kind of like layering on those let's help you do some drip campaigns so automate email marketing or then we'll layer on some automated texting but the core product and like the value we deliver has to be straightforward super easy to install you know takes five minutes to set up in the house and then then we value on some extra ad ons to like kind of boost your direct marketing.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

So I have a question. You had mentioned other um companies that that cater to the short-term rental market. And one that comes to mind and we've had the CEO on the show, founder, uh Turnover BNB. Are you familiar with them?

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Yeah. Ryland, don't you use them? Yeah, I was one of their first uh customers actually. Um and yeah a soft and turnover BNB are I could not run a hundred listings without that software. There's no way. It's amazing. Yeah I can't speak more highly. It was great when it was free back in the day but I'm uh everything is right now. Yeah and they've actually created a new new kind of spin-off software called Tescuro. It's made for it's what I believe is the first ever company or software for cleaning companies. There isn't a specific software for cleaning companies and so they've kind of built this based on their turnover BMB platform. And it actually has now given me the idea and enabled me to launch a cleaning company. I just did that last week Fernycleaning.ca and we're using Tescuro we're doing residential cleans commercial cleans um I just kind of had that aha moment of um you know I always had people coming to me other you know independent Airbnb operators or or otherwise going hey I heard you do cleaning can you do cleaning I said no way we only do our cleaning for our clients and then you know it was it's a little bit quieter now and this so the same day I have somebody asking me hey do you have cleaners who can do cleaning I tell them no and then my cleaners are going hey there's not as much work as there was in August and I kind of went wait a minute you can sit in the middle of that transaction yeah yeah I can be in the middle of that and uh yeah so turnover BNB and Toscuro um how does Toscuro work?

SPEAKER_04 46:02

Because now you get got my light bulb going off what's that exactly uh it's pretty beta software right now but um essentially it's it's more uh it's not they not for we don't use it to manage our vacation rental stuff we still use turnover BMB for that but it allows you to um assign tasks to employees where turnover BMB is more kind of um scheduling cleans with uh more subcontractor cleaners kind of style where you pay them through turnover BMB so this one's more like you have you have staff you assign them tasks for the day and uh yeah so you already have this infrastructure uh for your you know cleaners in your Airbnb company and then why not start offering those services if you're you know if you have the capacity to um yeah other cleaning needs how do you how do you spell tascuro I'm I I'm actually interested in that yeah task URL Task Euro okay um yeah because I'm really interested in that that that's interesting because uh my last our last episode I've been having a high cleaner turnover with turnover B and B due to different issues um so yeah I definitely look into something like that Task Euro and you're saying because I that's what I really want is a cleaning company yeah they can have they let them rotate out their own cleaners you know I I'm successful that's what I want too exactly you know that didn't exist so I had to create it.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

There you go I like that I'm actually I mean I hate to hijack this but uh I'm I'm gonna set it I didn't want to be a traditional cleaning company that has all this bad turnover and you know traditional cleaning companies the model is to make money off the backs of your cleaners and you know pay them peanuts and charge top dollar to your clients and it just drives your cleaners to do a crappy job. They don't care they take their time they you know bank their hours um so I didn't want that like that doesn't work all the cleaning companies that exist they all get bad reviews because the employees don't care. And so we're gonna turn this into a cleaner owned company and any profits that the company makes is going to go to the cleaners and so they have a vested interest in um making sure that it's it's gonna do well and they do a good job.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

That's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Smart. And so Ryland you should come back again and you could do a whole podcast on that.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

Yeah for sure we're only launched we only launched well we launched a week ago and we have like six six cleaning projects already our cleaners have uh been thrown into some move last minute move out cleans uh very exciting yeah different work but I'm like I just remind them I'm like yeah that's you get paid by the hour so get it done.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

So I uh the reason I brought up the the turnover BNB particularly because I I when we interviewed us off excuse me I had I had a conversation with him actually um later later on and um and and he and he said one of his one of his um oh what's it called regrets was was naming his company turnover BNB because it kind of tied him just to the short term industry you know really strongly you know and it's hard to like expand from there. Yeah and I see your you you're named Stafi so that's I mean that's you know you that that's flexible. But did and do you have any do you I mean is there any other like ways that you're gonna use your your technology outside of the STR world?

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Yeah ver yeah vertical creep uh dangerous stuff to play with so I'd say there are other companies that do guest Wi-Fi and they vertically specialize. I say there's generalists and there's specialists in this industry. And there's companies that specialize in restaurants and cafes or hotels or stadiums, you know, doing a deployment in an airport obviously super different than a vacation rental. So we really want to be specialized in short-term rentals um because that's how we're gonna drive additional value through extra tools. There are generalist we do have competitors and I say they're all generalist products and they're typically way more expensive because it's like could be for a restaurant or a home and there's a lot more volume in a restaurant, right? And the tools are generic and they're not going to be built for property managers. Typically they're also much more technically difficult to use because you could have like an IT person in like an office building as opposed to a vacation rental. So for us uh short term rentals is the name of the game. And I feel like if we ever did in the future launch a different vertical it would be in a different brand even if some of the core technology was the same.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Okay cool. And so let's pretend like um I'm Airbnb and I'm calling you hey uh Arthur Arthur I like your product uh we want to buy it for 10 million dollars what do you say Airbnb Airbnb's calling you probably would not no you wouldn't sell it for 10 million dollars no to the enemy I don't think you get why I'm asking it's too early it's too yeah I get it it's too too early too early for that.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Because they yeah get rid of this thing this pesky thing that's losing them customers throw 10 million bucks out of them get it get rid of them you know the way the way I view our business if in the future we were strategically acquired I think it would be by a larger software company that's doing kind of like the roll up that just happened with like Streamline and Blue Tent and all those people um because it like vertically would better integrate with like marketing services, website services, right? And we in the future might launch those types of services. So I think it's a natural fit in uh that type of a business.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

Yeah but I'm I guess my what I was getting at is Airbnb just must have you to get rid of you.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

So yeah I don't think Airbnb cares about me. So I'm uh Brian Chesky right is not uh I don't think I'm he's staying up at night worrying about Wi-Fi guess Wi-Fi email collection. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

I hope he's he has bigger problems so I'm worried about those yeah you know there's uh there's one more thing that I Arthur didn't talk about stay fi um it's something that I want to set up is uh guidebooks but do you guys use guidebooks like digital guidebooks in your at all? I need to I don't I don't I need to start and so uh Arthur showed me something that he was doing with uh one of his clients uh who has come over what they used uh hostfully or something touchday touchstay yeah and touchstay hostfully rubaro yeah are the three main ones that we come across the most right um and I haven't figured out how to do that yet but um I'm motivated more to do it because of the way that I see how it could work in uh with stay fi is that you know when somebody logs in to stay fift at the unit that they're in you can have it set up so it automatically redirects to that unit's uh digital guidebook with all of the stuff that they need for how to use the TV and all this where to go for lunch and um and Arthur I don't you can probably speak about how your customer yeah that kind of like the ideal scenario that we're building towards so right now let's say use touchday which is a popular product you'll each home's guidebook has a unique URL and it has all the information you need about the house it may even have value add services that you sell if you're interested in doing that.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

And so every guest after they log in to the Wi-Fi will get redirected. Then we've actually helped that particular company set up an email automation in MailChimp where each guest's welcome email the dynamic URL for that house's guessbook will get inserted into that email. So everyone gets an email as well after they log in with the guestbook URL because for most for them for instance they only send the guest book to the booker and if they have a party of 10 people and the booker went to the grocery store the other nine people can't access the touch day guide and so it's kind of useless. And then they end up calling the management company when they have questions. So we want to make sure everyone in the house has access to the book super easily. And then ideally in the future that would be one of those things that we would look to hey we could set up a text message trigger to and trigger the link because that is actually super valuable information we would love to text to every guest after logging in.

SPEAKER_04 54:51

I like that I actually really like that because right now my splash page takes them to my website but it would be cool if I had a splash page hey you can go look at here's our other properties and then hey here's the guidebook for where you are I'll I like that idea.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Yeah I don't want to give away too many secrets but uh next week we're launching it's called the success page. So when you log in it will redirect you to your website but starting next week when you log in it will redirect you to a success page that you can edit. So you can have the button for here's the guidebook, here's the website and then we also gonna have like follow on Instagram where it will push you out to follow on Instagram in the app and then they can go back into the browser and go to the website. So we'll have all that that fun kind of more social media integration coming yeah I love it. Well this has been a great show man we'd like to thank you all for hopping on um so first Arthur where can people find you people can find us at stafi.com s t-a y f i dot com uh and they also can email me at Arthur at stafi.com um yeah and the way you know if people want to sign up and try stafy the first there's no monthly cost for the first device so if you buy a device for 89 bucks there's no monthly cost for using it so really anyone can try the service deployed in a home and if you only have one property then good for you you can just use it for free. So uh you know we really just want to get the product in people's hands.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

Sweet.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:25

And uh Rylan where can folks find you and stay in your cool cabins up there or not they're not they're they're just not cabins what are they we got at all we got condos we got single family homes we're gonna have tiny homes uh you can check out furniedirect.ca and come stay with us furniedirect.ca and um and you got you're gonna make them a mean poutine right yeah that's not what we can do right well thank you coffee but you get poutine anybody who mentions uh the live and let thread podcast the books with us will get a free poutine with their stay oh all right there we go see now I'm about to advertise to you man so hey go to stay in Fernie and uh you know get your free poutine well thanks for hopping on any more questions for them Micah that was it man thanks for hopping on I really think your product's great uh Ryland we might have to get you back just so we can shoot some Airbnb you know 100 unit questions at you man so yeah that's good to share some maybe you get a couple guys like me and we can all share share some ideas definitely definitely awesome thanks guys thank you so much yeah thanks see y'all later L L T out peace later thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Live Let Thrive be sure to tune in next week for all the latest in the world of Airbnb and all that entails.

SPEAKER_00 57:50

Bye bye