Speaker: It's the Casa-Cast.
We've got Orange Credo.
Speaker 2: The
Speaker: Casa-Cast.
Our company's neato.
The Casa-Cast.
Created by CosaGo.
It's time for the show.
Let's go!
Hey, welcome to Casa-Cast.
I'm your host, Steve Schwab.
And today I'm with Mike Mears from Vacay My Way.
Hey Steve, it's good to see ya.
Hey, good to see you too.
Welcome to the show.
Yeah, glad to be here.
Mike, we've known each other for a long time now.
You've been our rep with different OTAs several times over the years.
, I'm really excited about this interview because until yesterday, I wasn't
aware that you're one of the co founders of this new OTA, Vacay My Way.
And It really makes my heart happy to see that you're moving along and progressing.
It's really exciting for you.
Speaker 2: It really is, you know, it's, it's been a, quite
a, an eye opening experience.
I would have never thought, you know, five, even five, 10 years ago that I would
be coming back and doing something like this, you know, the stars aligned and it
was the right fate and the right time.
And so, yeah, I feel very fortunate and blessed to do this.
So cool.
Speaker: Now, you've been in the industry for about 17 years, right?
Yeah.
And maybe you can share with us a little bit about that journey.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
So, I mean, I started with the first round of, uh, VRBO employees right at
the time when HomeAway actually was, was brought out, it was about 2008.
At that point, there wasn't a property manager program or anything like that.
It was really just, uh, get on and list your one or two units.
And, and I was actually, uh, touring in a band at the time and working
for Dell computers and a buddy of mine got an internship at HomeAway
and said, Hey, you know what?
You should come over here and hang out with me and make a
paycheck at the same time.
I wasn't married or had kids at the time, so I said, sure, no problem.
So I went over there and quickly realized that they were on to something.
You know, I had never thought about the vacation space before.
And after starting to talk to people on the phones, listening to their
passion, the fact that they were buying secondary homes to set up their
retirements, and all this stuff that seemed like it had some real passion
behind it, really lit a fire under me.
And then between myself and about two other people, we started looking a little
bit broader with the product and going, Hey, I bet you we can commercialize this.
I bet you that there's businesses out there that could
use some benefit from this.
And so we started knocking on doors and we started talking and interviewing property
managers that were out in the space that we could find it in basically a phone
book or on Yahoo directory at the time.
And they all said the same thing.
They were like, we've been looking for some other way to grow.
And so we kind of all held hands at that time together and What was an 11 million
dollar company at that point grew to a 350 million dollar company three years later.
Yeah, you know it was Crazy experience.
Never been in a company that has grown that fast in my life or been around one.
We did some amazing things.
The company, as a lot of you well know, grew, they went public and then
eventually got bought by Expedia.
And I was there for a lot of that.
I always like to consider it a secondary college education, really sitting up.
I used to sit right behind the founders, Brian Sharples and Carl Shepard and
all those guys and listen to them.
You know, argue back and forth, figure out how to refine the product, make it better.
You know, it was just a really awesome opportunity to learn and, and still
have my fingers in the day to day.
Yeah.
I understand.
Sounds like a really great experience.
Speaker: It was.
So Mike, you mentioned that you were with the band when you first started
working for VRBO, the Expedia group.
. You had an award that was a pretty interesting experience
for you, didn't you?
Speaker 2: We did.
We were very fortunate.
The Austin music scene was a great place for us.
It's where I still am actually to this day.
Our band was signed and touring at the time.
I mean, I was working for another company, but it gave us an opportunity to get
in front of the John Lennon songwriting contest, which is one of the more
prestigious ones in our industry space, especially for up and coming artists.
And we got the opportunity to compete and actually win.
That award in 2014 and it was amongst a bunch of very big industry moguls, people
like slash and guitar virtuosos, like Joe Satriani, Trisha Yearwood, um, really
spanned a lot of different places, but we got real feedback and an award out of it.
And I still to this day consider that one of the best experiences I ever had
when it came to knowing that people are genuine, they're real people and they
like to talk to you like real people, you know, it just kind of removed, I'd say
the curtain on human beings in general.
And so.
I always kind of considered that as my first chance of realizing that you can be
whoever you want in this life, and you're still human underneath, so it was cool.
What was the best piece of feedback
Speaker: you got from that experience?
Speaker 2: They said, you're one of the more innovative writers we've ever heard.
There's a lot of different styles that you push.
Into the same song.
It's okay to go ahead and quit your day job.
And so we ran it for a little while and we didn't quite make it because the market
changed and, and, and, and demand changed, but we got to have those experiences
for a few years and it was really great.
That's really cool.
Speaker: So today we're going to be talking about Vacay My Way,
your new startup that you're getting going and you're growing.
And we're going to speak about four things that I didn't know about Vacay My Way.
So number one is what became my way does to change
Speaker 2: the narrative for sure.
So one of the major reasons why I decided to jump back into this
and actually captain a ship, especially with the OTA industry as
it is, is that it's all grown up.
And I'd like to say that it's grown a little too far up and not necessarily
from any kind of negative way.
It's just that companies get big, they get expensive, you know, and, and they have
to offset those costs to keep in business.
Um, I saw that happening.
And I saw a lot of property managers having to offset their
costs to offset that cost.
Right.
And so now we started to see a pricing game happen.
You know, markets that were at one rate, we're now 20 percent higher
than they were the year after that.
And nobody could really figure out what the magic potion was
to continue to stay consistent.
You know, and then we started to see an interest from the hotels coming
in and actually taking a little bit of that real estate or that, that
traveler real estate away from us.
And you know, it just really lit a fire under me.
At the time I was working actually funny enough for inhabit, I was doing
commercial contracts with them and I had met Jim who is our CEO at this
point and we had kind of started playing with this model because it represented
the old model that we started where we grew from 11 to 350 million in
Verbo, but it had modern touches.
And it became really clear that that type of product doesn't
exist in the space right now.
Curiously, you know, our job here is not really to reinvent the wheel.
It's just to go back and learn from our mistakes and create a greatest hits
record of a product that focuses on the things that need to be focused on with
trimming all the fat off the other things.
And that's really where vacay my way has really come into its own is that.
You find without having to pay host fees.
First of all, you don't have to do that.
The travelers also don't have a postage service fee as well, so that
helps us market it pretty easily.
There's just a little bit of a wholesale on the nightly, which also covers
your credit card processing fees, and also gives you guest screening as well
and gives the travelers liability.
All of those little pieces together.
Wrap up and allow all three sides to win at the end of the day.
And that was the most important piece to me was that the user yourself wins.
We win and the traveler wins at the end of the day, we've made a created for
ourselves to saying that like anytime that we build a product, uh, we can't
build it unless all three sides win.
And so from a narrative perspective, we're trying to let people know
that, Hey, it's okay to price your units the way you want to price them.
You don't have to add the extra ambiguous booking fee or whatever it
is to try and offset costs with us.
You know, we want you to be able to price accurately, be competitive in
your own way and run your own business.
You know, and that to me is what I feel like has gotten a little
bit distance tier, especially from a marketing partner perspective.
And we're looking to re disrupt that.
That's really
Speaker: cool.
Yeah.
Going back to the old ways.
Yeah.
I'll say this, that when the OTS changed their business model.
I don't think it's been good for the industry as a whole
Speaker 2: at all.
Yeah, it's, it's been really difficult.
I mean, you fight two things.
I mean, some people think it's pure greed, but at the other side of it,
I really believe it's just growth.
I mean, when you make decisions to go public, now you're in a completely
different arena of politics, and then you get purchased by an even bigger giant in
the industry, and they have a complete mantra and way of doing things that they
want you to adhere to, you know, and that's, that's tough to do, especially
when the products are black and white.
And so there's a lot of growth there.
There's of work.
So for number two, like you said, compartmentalizing marketing
Speaker: is crucial.
Speaker 2: It really is.
So one of the things we learned growing up in the OTA space is not
to put all your eggs in one basket.
And we did that for a few years.
We hired one big giant marketing firm to kind of really handle
our, our stuff, doing Super Bowl ads and all that kind of stuff.
And we found that they didn't budget us correctly.
We'd run out of money and then we'd have to spend time raising more money
or getting more bookings before we could retarget and be effective again.
And part of that was the reason, I mean, I was at VRBO as an example, but that's
part of the reason why Airbnb was able to surpass us really quickly within about
the 14th or 15th year, uh, 2014, 2015.
That's because we ran out of money and they had marketing steam and
they ran right past us and we were playing catch up ever since on that.
And that was something I learned really quickly that you can't let
one person dictate your entire journey from a marketing perspective.
perspective.
So with us, we have four different firms that we work with.
They all do different things.
And then we also have an internal team, which is our gorilla marketing team.
They get to have the fun.
They actually market your brand specifically.
And then the external team works on doing the destination work, the feeder
markets and how we drive travelers.
So we love being able to have both pieces of it.
It's, you know, it's not just about the destination, although I feel like
that's one thing that's also missing and we can talk about that later.
But the second piece is actually showing your brand connecting
the market to your brand.
Those three pieces in a line should, should exist.
And to me, that's a travel confidence builder and itself that
is missing in the industry right now.
Steve V2: So for number three, you said future proofing
your company the right way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Our CEO, Jim is from Southwest airlines and he was part of the
team that built the original reward system back in the late two thousands
that everybody loves so much.
You know, you could buy three flights and get a free one out of it.
It was like the business travelers, like, Love dream basically, you know, they were
able to take their families on vacation for free, you know on flights and all
that And we basically kind of re injected that same kind of reward system where you
immediately save with us even starting from scratch So, you know a traveler
comes in our reward system allows us to ebb and flow and how much savings they
get Which allows us to play with the market depending on what's going on As
an example a traveler saves 100 on us on their first booking No matter what.
And it was important to us, we were talking about all three
sides winning earlier, about being able to give before we get.
And that is something that also doesn't exist in marketing partnerships.
You've got to sign up and commit yourself before we'll commit to you.
And that to me is backwards.
And so we found a way to build a product where we had enough margin to
where we could play with the numbers like this to give travelers an essence
of feeling like they're getting something for their money immediately.
And then they get points for every state too.
Speaker: Really
Speaker 2: cool.
So,
Speaker: so for number four, you said.
Creating a mindset change on merchandising listings on channels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier
is, you know, everybody's kind of been merchandising and pricing their units kind
of based on a bit of a fear model, really, which is, I have to make my nut, you know,
I have to make this much money this year.
This is where I've got to be.
So I'm going to price accordingly to that, whether it's market correct or it's not.
And not being able to determine your own path to me is a big no, no.
You know, and for us, we challenge ourselves every day to find ways
to get on the phone, interview more property managers, showing the value
of what we're doing to where they can remove that booking fee or they can
remove that credit card processing fee because we cover it or remove that
liability fee because we cover it.
You know, that's can be anywhere from a hundred to 150 in fees that
will absolutely drive a traveler over the mark to book again.
It's all about value
Speaker: so Mike, you mentioned that pricing your own way and making
sure that the fees, the OTE fees aren't pushing things over to the
edge of making the unit unrentable.
Can you talk a little bit about what your fees are or maybe we'll share that here?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah,
Speaker 2: absolutely.
We are very, very basic when it comes to fees and it's a wholesale fee.
That's all it is.
So what that means is that we take nine and a half percent of the nightly.
And we mark that up on our site.
So, give you an example.
If you've got a 200 a night place, it's going to show up on our site for 219.
50 as an example.
And that's the only thing that we charge.
There's no posted service fee and there's no host fees to you.
And that 19 bucks again covers your credit card fees, ID screening and then
liability for the traveler as well.
Speaker: And are you able to determine your own cancellation fees?
Speaker 2: We have four right now that we use.
They are based on length of stay.
Which is a little bit different than what everybody else does, but we found
that 98 percent of people are happy with picking one of those four options.
We do adhere to your closest policy and streamline as far as
for the integration standpoint.
But another piece that we do mention as well is that you do have a posted
a rental agreement if you have one.
In our booking feed, whenever you make the booking.
So the traveler can actually see if there's any nuances that you
need to put in there and whatnot.
We do find a lot of times that property managers want to call them back at a
credit card on file for all different reasons, whether it's their own
accidental stuff or they want to upsell them on local things that are going on.
Speaker: Really cool.
And are you able to speak to, like, what's your strategy for
like growing your, your demand, you know, your traffic on the website?
Do you have a novel way of doing it or are you going traditional SEO or?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question.
I think all of those things are played.
But I think the biggest piece is reverse marketing to me.
And that is really focusing as heavily as you can on the feeder.
positioning of marketing instead of the actual destinations because it will
take you to the destinations, right?
It's a two step process.
So if we, if we know that as an example, Boston, New York, and
Chicago are 35 percent of the beach market destination, right?
Now we're going to hit that like crazy.
You know, we're going to spend 30, 40, 50, 000 a month like marketing those areas.
We'll put PR on it.
We'll run USA Today giveaway ads, all these things to bring the brand
out to drive the travelers to there.
And then as soon as we know that we're getting that traffic, we retarget the
traffic with our boots on the ground team.
And then we start introducing the property managers that are in the area.
So it's a twofold process, right?
So you create confidence by saying, okay, you're this person.
brand.
You're posted everywhere.
I should probably check you out.
But then by the time you get in there, you start realizing, Oh, there's a
living, breathing ecosystem there of people that manage businesses and there's
professionals and it just has a little bit more of a, you knocked on the door
and met the person face to face feel without having that physical experience.
Right.
Speaker: Really cool.
And so you allow the property managers to speak directly to.
Yes,
Speaker 2: sir.
We do.
Having unfiltered communication is key.
I mean, just to be completely transparent, we realize that that's
a risk that gives you an opportunity to take it off site if you need to.
But quite frankly, if we're doing our job, unless there's a problem, most people
stay loyal to it because they're making the same money at the end of the day.
Like I said, I mean, we realize that this is your business.
And so if you've got a grumpy traveler that you just cannot
satiate, do what you need to do.
Right.
You know, there's no reason for us to sit here and gripe over one booking, you know,
Speaker: I think that, uh, there are some actors out there in the industry as a
whole, who will always look to, you know, take advantage of something like that.
But I think our industry as a whole, and especially the Costco
ecosystem, we're really here to do the right things by people.
And if you've got a good booking that's come through, we're So
everybody understands that OT is going to make the money to, to
continue to drive traffic to you.
So there's a lot of good actors in this, you know, in this industry and
those are the people we count on.
Speaker 2: I agree.
You know, it's been really awesome.
As crazy as it is.
And as long as I've been around, I have never been to a Casa con and
I got to say, uh, meeting a lot of the different property managers and
franchisees and just watching everybody really relay on each other and be open
about their strengths and weaknesses.
That is the way you grow.
That's how you grow an industry.
You know, if you want traveler confidence, you need to show that the
businesses have confidence in each other.
Yeah.
Huge.
Yeah.
I think so.
Great job, Steve.
Speaker: Thank
Speaker 2: you.
Speaker: It's, it's the people.
If I'm able to see far, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants, right?
Like I
Speaker 2: agree.
Speaker: These are beautiful people here.
All unified together by, you know, a credo and a belief and contractually by a, uh,
territories that are, are non competing.
So it just builds an environment of trust and sharing and good
information back and forth.
I'm really excited about it.
So thank you for that.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker: So Mike, as we're starting to wind down, tell me, what's
your favorite It's the first letter from the Orange Credo.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to look through this because I was like, Orange Credo.
I kind of freaked out.
We're a relatively new partner, just so that you know.
So I had to go look up, and I was like, What's Credo?
Okay.
And so I realized it's an acronym.
So, for me, actually reading through all of it, I think E, for excellence,
was probably my favorite one.
Because I think it's, It's a pretty broad term that explains
what we're trying to do.
Um, in order to be best in class, you have to think outside of yourself first.
And it's create excellence is to create excellence and others before yourself.
And to me, that is where we are always going to lead with this product is, you
know, we're going to say lean and mean focus on the things that matter, but
making sure that at the end of the day, if you're going to use this, you're going to,
you're going to make money if it produces, you know, and that's the whole goal here
is to, you know, Keep you in business, let you enjoy this industry that you love so
much and feed your kids and, and retire when you're ready to retire, you know,
we want to be part of that experience
Speaker: really great.
. Have you learned anything or how do you really Like big
takeaways from Casa Con so far?
Speaker 2: You know, there's some very smart business people here that
are smarter than me, which is great.
One of the things that was mentioned this morning, because we're scaling
right now, was saying , focus on your boots on the ground, and focus on the
things that need to be done and handled.
Because that'll attract better leaders, basically, once you have that.
And that would really open my eyes because I've been so focused on leadership,
growing a company as fast as we have.
And so I love just the experience that's here.
There's a lot of property managers that have been around for a long time.
They may have sold the business and then come back into the space.
So there's a lot of knowledge here and I feel like I learned something here.
And to me, to learn something at a trade show, being around for
17 years, that's gold for me,
Speaker: like
Speaker 2: walking away with something, you know?
So,
Speaker: Mike, congratulations on VacayMyWay and your ascension
to being a co founder, I know you're going to do well with it.
And we're looking forward to working with you, and if any of our partners
are interested in signing up with you, how do they get a hold of you?
Speaker 2: So you can go straight to vacaymyway.
com.
We also have a knowledge portal at the very bottom of our
webpage that is like a wiki.
So, if you want to know how to connect to us, All the
instructions are there, ready to go.
We are a self service Premier Partner with Streamline, so you can get in and
do it yourself if you have any problems.
There's support buttons everywhere, or you can call 888 VACAYMYWAY.
You can get a hold of us.
Perfect.
Thanks again, Mike.
Always good to see you, Steve.
You too, pal.
Yep.
Speaker: It's the CasaCast Cast.
We're so luxurious.
The Cossack Cast.
They all want to be us.
The Cossack Cast.
Just don't call it an Airbnb.
Okay?
It's the Cossack Cast.
We've got orange credo.
The Cossack
Cast.
Our company's NATO.