Speaker: Hey, welcome to keynotes.
I'm your host, Steve Schwab, the only podcast for Casago Homeowners.
Today we're talking to my friend Andrew Mitchell, the founder of
Wheelhouse, about his take of only on revenue management, but on how
it applies to being owner centric.
Andrew, welcome to the show.
Great to be here.
Excited to dive in.
Yeah.
Great to have you.
So we've just spent a couple days, uh, where you flew in with
one of your teammates, Amber.
Mm-hmm.
And really worked on making sure we were well aligned on our go forward with the
partnership between Wheelhouse and Casago.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Yeah.
Two excellent days of engaging with you and other teammates here and,
and really looking at that future of when, when you apply the term
owner centric to revenue management.
What does that mean and how can we deliver something to, to your owners and
to your teammates that is, uh, really exceptional and kind of best in class
Speaker: here.
, Andrew, before we get started going down the path of, , our partnership
and how we're thinking about it and the alignments that we have, I'd like
everybody to get to know you a little bit.
, I've come to know you and always grateful when I see your attitude, uh,
the way you work with everybody, just.
The entire way that you just conduct yourself.
And I'm really proud to be your friend.
I'd like everybody to know a little bit about you and get , a clear
understanding of who you are.
Can you tell us a little about, , how you got here, how you got started in
the business, and where Wheelhouse is going and maybe even what it is today?
Speaker 2: Appreciate that Steve.
Uh, obviously a friendship is two directions.
Grateful to be here with you, grateful to be building with you and your team.
Uh, super exciting opportunity that we have ahead of us.
Wheelhouse, , today, um, we are a company of about 30 folks.
We're spread across many markets and we serve a bunch of teams, about 6,000
businesses in 140 countries worldwide.
And our goal is to bring transparency and control to people around, in
particular, um, the revenue or the performance , of their short term
rental, vacation rental properties.
Getting here has been a fun journey of entrepreneurship, right?
How many fun ups and downs have we both had in building the
businesses that we have today?
But, uh, I first first started looking at this category and this technology
about 12 years ago, um, founded another company called Beyond Pricing.
That, which was really trying to answer this question of could we use data to look
at all these unique properties out there and figure out how to price them better
based on oral source of demand signals in wheelhouse, which is, uh, I started about
two years after founding that business.
Was a deeper dive into kind of maybe a different type of data science and
how it could be applied to that same problem set, but ultimately looking at
about how to take a unique asset and understand what it's worth on any day.
. And when you
Speaker: say a unique asset, you mean somebody's vacation home, right?
Speaker 2: It is, that's the fun part about our space, right?
When you look at all these individual properties, owners,
owners have properties.
We are often helping price both an asset, so something you wanna make
some money off of, but also a, a important part of your family's story.
And it turns out that when you look across the dimensions, there are a lot
of different considerations that people have of how they want to price their
home or dates they want to protect, or minimum prices they wanna put in place.
There's a huge amount of dimension that people bring to the pricing strategy.
So when you think about wheelhouse.
Our job is to look at all the data near your home and help price that
asset well, but also be able to adjust those prices around strategy
or risk that you want to pursue.
So it's a, it's a data science challenge.
It's a design challenge and ultimately it's a service challenge.
'cause we need to be able to help people make better decisions through.
Great display of visual information controls that help
them, achieve their goals.
And ultimately, um, inability to, if you're in the, the shoes of
a, a revenue manager, communicate with owners and make sure that
the owner understands what Casago.
doing to, to maximize the value of their asset while protecting that family home.
Esteban: We're looking for a way to maximize the value of a given
night for a homeowner to get the best price against their asset.
Is that a good way to think about it?
Speaker 2: It is.
And the part that makes it fun and, and why I started with a unique asset is.
Each of these homes has, they might have a porch, a pool, a
patio, , parking, pet policy.
All those have different values to different travelers.
Mm-hmm.
Your pool is worth more on the 4th of July than it is on January 4th.
Right.
At least in the northern hemisphere.
, So that's, part of the unique nature of all this.
And of course, who you're targeting if you have, uh, mostly families
coming into your place, or mostly couples coming into your place.
There's a lot of different aspects that make it so This is not like pricing
a hotel room or an airline seat.
This is pricing a really unique asset and , looking at the future, well what
take it, take any day for the next 590?
It's like, how should it be priced in order to maximize your expected revenue?
It's a really interesting data science challenge.
Speaker: As you and I have spent time together over the years,
uh, we met at a conference, you know, hit it off immediately
from the very first time we met.
Started talking about, , finding the best way to serve homeowners, to make
sure that they have the information they need to see that we're making good
decisions or help us make good decisions.
We started talking around these words, owner centric revenue management.
Yeah.
Our orange credo, for those who don't know that we talk about
every single day at Casago.
You know, the very first line of it is, I am the owner's advocate
and I'll make all decisions based on the owner's best behalf.
Right?
And so when I think about those words and how we're applying,
making great decisions.
For the homeowner.
What does that mean when it comes to being owner centric and
revenue management put together?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
The way we think about it is how do you empower the owner to understand
what you're doing around pricing strategy, or even to have an
impact on that pricing strategy?
We've talked a little bit about data science and pricing.
Those can be pretty complex things, right?
Wheelhouse has machine learning models that are running to try to
understand the value of your house.
That's not really what we're talking about here.
To us, owner centric revenue management looks like an owner is informed about
how their market's performing, how competitors are performing, adjustments
they might want to make to their property.
They can be as hands-on or hands off if they, if they want to, but
if they want to come in, look at the how their homes performing.
It needs to be really easy for the owner to understand what's being
done to their, to their home.
So we think o Owner centric Revenue Management looks like.
Making all this complex stuff that we've been talking about.
Very easy to understand, very visual.
Again, if you wanna come in and see how your home is performing against how you
did last year, similar assets, et cetera, that should be a very easy thing to do.
And we also think that the people that homeowners interact with
should be able to, if you wanna adjust some aspect of your strategy,
minimum price, minimum stays.
That shouldn't be a complicated thing that should be accomplished in a second.
It should be something that, again, you can play a role in, you'll understand
the impact of that decision, but ultimately it's a collaboration around
how you want your home to be managed and how you want your home to be priced.
Esteban: With all this in mind, Casago and Wheelhouse has decided
to Partner . You're going to be the, uh, Revenue Management Platform
for Casago, and within that Vacsa.
And really try to help us bring forward a new era with the revenue management
team that we have and empower them.
And I often think a lot about, a price, say of $500, right?
If a homeowner sees a price of $500 for the night, that price can
be either a hero price or a zero price when it comes to, , what the
homeowner's expectation is, right?
So.
Homeowner might say, Hey, you only rented me for $500 on this night.
And to be able to tell a homeowner, you know, yes, that looks like a zero because
you were expecting more, but it's actually a hero price because if I can show you
the data within your competitors, only half of them booked and the half that did
book actually booked for less than $500.
Maybe they booked for $400, . So suddenly.
$500.
Same event, same price, same night, goes from us as , a company looking like
we've failed, , the zero, so to say, to going to hero that we're actually
performing well for that homeowner and within that market set is happening.
I think that's really important when we think about making sense of what's
going on within a market and our team be being able to have a conversation that
actually has value to those homeowners.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
I mean, Casago's mantra for what 25 years has been owner centric.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker 2: Right.
All we're doing at this point is saying, cool, how do you apply?
Apply an owner centric lens to revenue management, and I think what you
all are, are gonna bring to this is.
Revenue management systems historically have been built
for revenue management teams.
They're complicated systems.
They're big and bulky, but what we really want to do with owner
centric is to empower your owners in a way that no other system does.
So, yes, whether the booking in, you need to add some context to that.
Usually.
More importantly, we're looking at future nights, so like, hey,
we, we have you priced at $500.
Mm-hmm.
Let's understand whether that's the right decision for you.
So we can easily show you that at that $500 price, you're at the highest end of
the market and the market's not booking.
Or we can show you, hey, we brought your price up to $600.
'cause the market started booking a couple days ago.
Speaker: Right,
Speaker 2: right.
So context is, power.
And I think we are designing systems so that you all can have
a better dialogue around how you want your asset to be priced.
And that might sound really simple.
But it is new.
So that , starting with the premise of what would owner centric look like.
It means that yes, we serve revenue managers, we serve property managers,
but , the ask you have given to us is you want us to make sure that your owners
are the most empowered owners out there.
. Speaker: And that's exactly what we talked about.
, Andrew, when I asked you to sit down with me and do a podcast so our homeowners
can understand what we're doing here, you gave me four points you wanted to cover.
I think we've covered number one already with context around making sure homeowners
understand what we're doing, how we're doing it, how we're coming to these
decisions, and being able to see that.
And then for number two, you said increased speed to resolution?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Let's talk about that.
Yeah.
Every owner has a right to reach out to you at any point.
Mm-hmm.
And ask you about either ask for justification of how
their home is being priced.
Or to say, you know what I, I want, I'm not comfortable with X, Y, or Z.
I want to increase my minimum price for the 4th of July, or whatever it may be.
Historically, when owners have called into to many operators there, there
haven't been very clear answers about why the price is a particular
way or maybe they said, Hey, we'll take care of that down the road.
What we're doing right now is we're taking the Vacsa and Casago teammates and we're
training 500 people at the same time.
Who are all gonna be able to answer your questions much more quickly.
If you have a question about a price, they're gonna be able to
show you some of this context.
We're talking about how the market looks, how a comp set looks, how you
price last year, , what is, what are the demand signals showing us today?
So a many teammates will be able to help you immediately with that.
And if you decide you wanna change something.
They'll be able to do it on that call.
Mm-hmm.
So that's what we're moving toward.
We're moving toward an instant re resolution platform that look at the
end of the day, it's, it's your asset and you're working with Casago to
maximize the value of it and to Yes.
Resolve problems quickly.
Uh, we are basically creating, uh, training your team, Steve,
your team, in a much more visual way to communicate price signal.
Pricing decisions and also for the homeowner to say, I can see
that and I still wanna do X, Y, or Z, and solve that right there.
So we think that's valuable.
Speaker: You know, as we're going from a very centralized model with Vacsa to
this decentralized model, , with Casago, uh, one thing that's a big change for the
organization is making sure to empower the people at the local level, right?
And so when a homeowner calls one of their local representatives.
Being able to give that representative the knowledge and the tools and
the empowerment to be able to have a conversation, , and talk
about like, well, here's what I'm seeing in the pricing system.
Yes, I can make that change for you.
Yeah, here's some context to it.
And if it gives me on their skillset, being able to give them the next
level of support, but being able to have intelligent conversations
about what they're doing, why we're doing it, what we're seeing.
It's just a lot less frustrating for a homeowner to be able to have somebody
on the ground who understands the fundamentals of what we're doing and is
able to look into the system and make some adjustments, uh, as needed so that
we can get back to the homeowner with real results without having to wait for.
You know, days or trying to channel change them, channel changing
meaning like we gotta switch them to another person to talk to.
Mm-hmm.
I just think it's a much better environment for that homeowner.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
It's a little bit about alignment.
Like look, at the end of the day, the homeowner probably wants to
make more money from their home.
And guess what, at the end of the day, Casago go dose too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But that still means making decisions and, and sometimes trade offs.
So sometimes you might come in and disagree with a price.
If you wanna change the price up by 20%, or you think you're not booking
fast enough, so you wanna bring some prices down across your portfolio.
Well, our job is to show you the impact of that decision.
You still might accept that decision.
Yeah, but we need to be able to communicate, Hey, if your minimum price
is $300 a night, that that will probably impact your expected revenue in some ways.
Or it could.
Or if you're often hitting your minimum price during low season, you
probably want to hear from Casago or someone like, Hey, we think if we
drop that minimum price to two 50.
We can bring in some more revenue for you during this low season.
Is that the right decision for you?
So the interplay here that's really interesting is we've been lucky to
work with the, the revenue managers here at Casago for a long time.
It is a really good dedicated team who wants to serve people fast.
Mm-hmm.
And we are training, obviously 500 ops teammates too, who are so excited
'cause they're like, oh, finally we can go right to our owners with answers.
With solutions, et cetera.
So I think the fun part that on this design paradigm has brought to all
of us here is we are feeling very optimistic that we can deliver on
this premise of owner centric revenue management first quickly and then
completely over the coming months.
. Speaker: So speaking of design, , leads us right into number three.
We're building a one of a kind dashboard with wheelhouse where
homeowners are able to see.
A lot of information that's gonna be able to answer questions in real time.
Can you expand on that?
What does that look like?
, Speaker 2: We're looking at delivery mechanisms.
So how can we get right into where your owners wanna see this information?
Mm-hmm.
Is it in their email or some other place?
A portal or whatever it may be.
But, , we're really thinking about those delivery mechanisms so we fit
seamlessly into your owners' lives.
So an effective dashboard helps you get quickly back to what you need to
be doing with the rest of your day.
So dashboard will tell you how are you performing?
It will tell you how you're performing potentially year over year
versus competitors versus market.
But a good dashboard should capture that word, dash.
It's simple, it's easy, you look at it and you know you're being taken care of.
I think the second part behind it is if you do have a question about
something you see in the dashboard, how easy is it for you to go get an
answer to understand the why behind it?
So we think of dashboard design as how quickly can we hopefully in a few seconds,
ensure that you know your home's being taken care of and is doing well revenue
wise, and if you want to learn more, make it easy for you to go get to those
bits of information that might be able to add context to that performance.
. You know, between
Esteban: building this.
Dashboard, giving our homeowners access to it in, and then for whatever information
they need beyond that, training 500 people , , within the ecosystem to be
able to answer even more questions.
I just think that the experience our homeowners are going to have at the
end of this project is going to be.
, 180 degrees from where we've been and , we're gonna be able to fix
the frustrations of people not being able to get back to 'em.
Because the truth is, , you have to have enough people to have bandwidth,
to be able to have conversations.
Right?
And you have to be able to give them information so they don't have to always
go to people first if they don't want to
. And I think that the convenience of the information at their
fingertips digitally and then.
A army of people who can answer questions for 'em.
I think of it as a complete change step in what has been offered and what
Casago goes go forward will be thinking about how the owner centric model
plays into making sure we're taking care of our homeowners and giving them
that transparency that they deserve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to just name it.
All the folks who worked with Casago for the last many years know how serious
you are about being owner centric and taking care of folks and the Vacsa folks
who are now coming into your portfolio.
These homeowners, I think they, I think my message for them , would
be actually relatively simple.
I've been building pricing and revenue management systems for 12 years.
I founded two of the three major companies in the category
beyond pricing and wheelhouse.
Our teams have won multiple design and product wars over the years.
No team until you all came to me and said, we wanna deliver
owner centric revenue management.
That has never been the design challenge that someone has given to us.
We've had people say they want our system to run faster.
A revenue manager wanted this knob or dial, and we've done a
great job of delivering on that.
But again, over hundreds or thousands of conversations, you have brought
this design principle of go to the owners and empower the owners.
So when it's 180 degrees.
I would argue it's just the new paradigm mm-hmm.
That you're focused on.
And since we're gonna deliver it with you to the owners, like if you've ever had a
challenge around some of the pricing or revenue strategies in the past, like just
know that you have a software team and a leadership team at Casago who is taking
time to really invest in, in what will look like fundamentally new capabilities.
, And we take that.
We take this challenge seriously.
Esteban: I think that our thought process and what we're gonna be
able to bring to our homeowners.
Is going to evolve 'cause like you and I were talking about earlier, okay.
We understand what our goal is.
We understand the paradigm that we're, , we're taking forward as we make
decisions and uncover opportunities.
I think that the dashboard we initially deliver, , will be, you know, on point.
But I think that we'll find opportunities along the way to build something,
uh, that's really meaningful.
With new innovations as we, , as we find, , opportunities to , provide
additional value to homeowners.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
The truth is no two owners are alike.
Right, right.
And even if they're more alike, well they, you know, owners change
over time and goals change over time as, as people's lives evolve.
So the challenge is how do you make a dashboard that speaks to each owner?
Mm-hmm.
At wheelhouse from a data science perspective, we like to say, well,
there's the right way to price a home.
You can look at demand signals and booking patterns and say there's
a right way to price a home.
But in truth, you kind of know after, unfortunately, the dates have passed.
After all the market has has booked.
But there are many rational ways to price a home, and one owner
might wanna listen to prior booking history a little bit more.
One might wanna listen to the future a little bit more.
One might wanna look at just a few competitors near their property and
really strategize against those.
So there are many rational ways to price a home and a system like Wheelhouse
isn't a blunt, Hey, here's your owner dashboard and here's how you price,
it's how do you wanna price, how do you wanna handle this going forward?
And great.
Let's make that easy.
Esteban: The entire company is built on a one relationship with one owner at a time.
When we speak to our owners, they have wants and needs and goals that are
individual and unique . and you can't treat them all with the same strategy
you have to be able to customize what you're doing to meet that
homeowners goals with that property.
Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Esteban: I think that we are bringing that forward.
With some of , the settings and the ability to adjust how aggressive
you're gonna be or how you want to maybe have a bias towards, , your
nightly rate or towards occupancy.
I think these are all parts and pieces of how we end up getting to our goal of being
able to serve that individual relationship and their goals one at a time.
Yes.
Andrew, for number four, you put empowerment.
Speaker 2: All of it is about empowerment.
And empowerment in my mind comes from, in our minds, comes from transparency.
So can you see information about how you're being priced?
It's about control.
Can you make a decision right there about a change you wanna make?
And it's about a dialogue.
It's about communicating, right?
So I think the goal of our system is to make it easy to talk about these things.
Easy to make a decision and easy to make sure that your homes
manage exactly as you please.
Esteban: Yeah, something I've been saying for a long time is that revenue
measurement is a team sport, and just like on a football team, everybody has to be
able to play their part and contribute, and without having each person within
that ecosystem, the homeowner, the local representative, the gm, the analyst, the
revenue manager, everybody has a different viewpoint and a different part to play.
And I think making sure that we're empowering the team across each and
every position really matters, right?
The homeowner is part of the team when it comes to revenue management.
What are your goals?
How are you thinking about how you want your property to be priced and managed?
The team on the front line needs to be able to speak to that homeowner and have
a meaningful conversation with them.
The general manager needs to be able to help along with more complex issues.
The analyst needs to be able to have data and an understanding of each
and every property one by one, right?
Mm-hmm.
You know, we get up to the senior revenue manager who's looking at macro
issues like, how's this market doing?
What's affecting pricing and pacing?
Mm-hmm.
So we all have a role to play.
I think that the empowerment comes by being able to train our teams, be
able to give homeowners more context.
To provide this ecosystem to really drive better results for our
homeowners at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: You know what I appreciate about that too.
You all are putting your money where your mouth is.
I mentioned we're training 500 people across the Casago right now.
It's not that you said, Hey, wheelhouse, we wanna work with you and train up
10 or 20 of our revenue managers.
You said we're gonna make sure that all of our teammates can speak to
owners better and more concretely about their pricing strategy.
Your team is a group that is eager to learn, eager to help, eager to serve.
And it's really been interesting to watch them kind of as they've
gotten to use the system, start to say, well, thank goodness, 'cause
I can now serve my owners better.
Mm-hmm.
So I think it's not, uh, this isn't a long change coming.
This training is happening now.
We'll have every single teammate across Casago who's gonna
be interacting with owners.
Everyone will be trained by, at worst, September 15th.
That's seven weeks from now and that, that training started a while ago.
So we have just a deep commitment to training and education.
It's about empowering you and and owners.
You'll be able to talk to people who will be able to show you real
wired decisions are being made, make changes with you, et cetera.
So the most fun part about this conversation happening now is, this isn't
a huge hypothetical, it's No, this is happening now and you're about to see it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
You know, it,
Speaker: it comes down to great people.
And by the way.
Teams at Vacsa.
There are really great people there.
Awesome people.
Yeah, great training.
'cause you have to give your great people the, the skill sets
to be able to be successful.
Uh, you have to give them great tools.
That's where wheelhouse steps in with a system that gives us a lot
more visibility than we've ever had.
And then great values.
How do we apply all that through leadership to make sure that
we're heading in a direction.
That we all can get behind, right?
Mm-hmm.
And I think that's where our partnership really aligns well.
Yeah.
So, Andrew, before we go, I'm gonna ask you one last question.
Um, we've talked a little bit about it on the podcast, our orange credo.
We have six different pillars within that orange credo.
Which one's your favorite excellence?
Why is it excellence?
Speaker 2: Because it's such an interesting word
and I think excellence is.
Something that our organization strives for really deeply.
I mean, one of our, one of our, one of our team's mottos, is Excellence Everywhere.
We believe that everything you do is important.
That phone call you have, that email you send all the way up to the
strategy and the, the effort you put in to everything is really important.
And, and our team, uh, strives collectively towards excellence.
But.
Excellence is a team sport.
Uh, in this case, excellence means listening to owners, listening to
Casago, listening to your teammates, and seeing how we can show up to
serve that in a really bespoke manner.
I think, uh, at Wheelhouse we're interested in doing things in that are
unique, that are beneficial to others.
That, and that set kind of a, a standard for the type of software that
we think all of our customers, whether it's owners or property managers
or revenue managers, deserve So.
Excellence is the motto that, uh, I believe in, that our team believes in.
And I was pumped to, I was excited to read about it in, in the Credo as well.
Speaker: Yeah, it's, it's another one of our alignments.
, When I think of excellence, somebody asks, why not perfection said, because
you'll exhaust yourself in perfection.
You'll never get their excellence is something you can actually achieve.
And my definition of excellence personally is if I can look at what
I've, I've done and be proud of it.
You know, you know in your gut when something isn't right and that you're
not proud of, and that's not excellence.
I think that when I can look at something and say, I'm really proud
of the work I did, it may not be perfect, but it was excellent and I
think that's a achievable goal and I think we're well aligned on that.
A hundred percent.
Andrew, thanks so much for coming on.
To all of our homeowners.
Thanks for listening.
We're really looking forward to providing, , new tools, better training
empowered teams for you, and driving a lot more valuable of a service for you.
Thanks again for listening.
Have a great day.