Uncover the truth behind the myths of Airbnb passive income. Are you tired of hearing promises of "get rich quick" and effortless rental riches? In this conversation, Lauren Madewell, Operations Manager of Auntie Bellham’s Cabin Rentals, pulls back the curtain on the realities of running a successful vacation rental business.

With over a decade of hands-on experience, Lauren shares her hard-earned wisdom on what it truly takes to thrive in the competitive short-term rental market. From debunking the "passive income" myth to exploring the spectrum of hospitality, this episode offers a refreshingly honest perspective.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover the secrets to creating passive income with Airbnb and maximize your vacation rental earnings.
• Uncover direct booking strategies for vacation rentals that will boost your property's occupancy and revenue.
• Learn how to enhance the guest experience through impactful hospitality practices that keep visitors coming back.
• Master the art of marketing vacation rentals on social media to attract more guests and elevate your property's visibility.
• Navigate the short-term rental industry with expert insights and tips to stay ahead of the competition.

About Lauren Madewell

Lauren Madewell, the seasoned operations manager at Auntie Bellhalm’s Cabin Rentals in the picturesque Spooky Mountains, brings a wealth of experience and a unique familial connection to the vacation rental industry. Her journey from joining the family business over a decade ago to witnessing the shifts in customer behavior, property management, and the influx of new property owners in the market offers an insightful perspective. With a down-to-earth and pragmatic approach, Lauren offers practical advice and genuine insights into the nuances of creating sustainable passive income through Airbnb. Her deep understanding of the industry and the evolving landscape makes her a trusted resource for property owners looking to navigate the world of short-term rentals effectively.

Connect with Lauren and Auntie Bellum’s Cabin Rentals:

Website: https://www.auntiebelhams.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auntiebelhamscabinrentals/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/auntiebelhamscabins/

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@auntiebelhams

https://linktr.ee/auntiebelhams

** Exclusive offer for DBS Podcast Listeners: Take advantage of the 15% OFF when you stay at Auntie Bellham’s Cabin Rental **

The key moments in this episode are:

00:00:00 - The Myth of Passive Income on Airbnb

00:03:18 - Family Business Legacy and Transition

00:07:04 - Evolution of the Vacation Rental Industry

00:09:15 - Changing Dynamics with Property Owners

00:12:50 - Managing the Complexities of Property Management

00:13:26 - The importance of communication in business operations

00:16:15 - Inside Out Hospitality

00:19:29 - Creating a Culture of Hospitality

00:22:02 - Hospitality in Action

00:25:37 - Engaging Content Strategy

00:27:21 - Standing Out Through Personality and Hospitality

00:28:39 - Leveraging National Days for Content Creation

00:31:34 - Importance of Guest Interactions and Trust

00:33:45 - Direct Booking Success and Guest Savings

FREE GUIDE: 10 Ways to Drive Guests to your Website instead of Airbnb: https://directbookingsuccess.com/10-ways-to-drive-guests-to-your-website-instead-of-airbnb/

Show notes are available at: https://directbookingsuccess.com/podcast/

Follow Jenn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/directbookingsuccess

Join Jenn’s free Facebook group – the Marketing Hub: https://www.facebook.com/groups/strmarketinghub

You too can create passive income on Airbnb. Get rich quick so you can spend your days sipping margaritas on the beach. Unfortunately, there are actually people out there propelling these myths. So when I heard someone utter the phrase passive my assive in regards to running vacation rentals, I knew I had to talk to her. You are listening to the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast, bringing you all the information you need for your short term rental to stand out from the crowd. I'm your host, Jenn Boyles. As an owner and manager myself, I know how hard it can be to navigate the hospitality industry. I'm here to help so you too can have direct booking Direct Booking Success. Hello and welcome to another episode of the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast. I'm Jenn Boyles, your host. I'm super excited to be here with you today. I'm speaking with Lauren Madewell. Lauren is the operations manager of Auntie Belham's Cabin Rentals located in the Spooky Mountains. Now, she got my attention by coming up with that phrase passive my assive. And when I heard it, I just knew I had to have her on the podcast. And since getting into her world, I have heard the phrases inside out. Hospitality. Hospitality is a spectrum and Happy Weed Your Garden Day. So I'm so excited to speak to her about these things and more. Welcome, Lorne. Thank you for joining me today.

Jen, I'm so happy to be here with you. And I got to say, I love your voice. I think you have such a good, like, narrator's entertainer's voice. I love it.

Thank you. Thank you. That's really it.

I'm excited to be here with you guys.

Yeah, I'm so glad you're here because I have to say that passive my assive, it just all those pet peeves that I have when I'm looking at the industry as a whole and I'm seeing these people out there talking about getting rich quick and all this, and I'm like, seriously, this is so not passive. If anyone thinks scrubbing toilets and changing bed linen and dealing with guests is passive, they're crazy. Is that where it came for you?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, seeing these. Seeing these essentially content creators saying that you could get rich quick, like buying a property, putting it up on Airbnb and hosting it yourself. Passive income. Passive income. I had never heard that term before. Started to hear it in like 2021, 2022. It was such a joke to me that it deserved a joke and response which just passed. That is my passive my assive, and I can't remember what it was. Somebody had posted something on LinkedIn, and I think that's really all that I said. And then several people were just like, I know, right? I. Passive, my ass.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

No, and I'm right there with you. And that's what got my attention, because I just went, yeah, that is so, so true. And, you know, the pandemic came out, and the world opened up, and people went crazy because they've been stuck in their houses. And of course, it was like a little gold rush, but, yeah, so not passive. So tell me about it. It's your family business, Auntie Belham's Cabin. How did it start? And how. And why did you join the team?

It's actually kind of a neat story. So we're actually celebrating our 30 years, something that we're just so proud about and tickled by. But in 1994, my dad's cousin, Shannon Hercut, founded it. She was a real estate agent over here in this area, and she bought a couple properties that she started managing herself. She just lived right up the road from. And then eventually, through the network, being involved in town, other people were like, will you manage my property? Will you manage my cabin if I get one? And so it just kind of ballooned from there and very quickly went from real estate to cabin rental. She founded it, owned it, and operated it from 1994 to 2009. And then in 2009, when she passed away, she left it to my dad in the will. It was a total surprise. We were living in Georgia at the time, and for those who don't know, the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, we were living in Georgia at the time. And I was in college, and my dad, just to make sure that the business was staying afloat and all of her employees were taken care of, he was visiting a lot to just everything taken care of. And he fell in love with it. He fell in love with the beauty of the area, the work itself, the people. A lot of the people here had been working there for years. They took the job seriously. They were passionate, and they were like family to Shannon. And so he realized pretty quickly, this is what I would rather spend my life doing. So quit his job in Georgia, moved here full time, and that was in 2009. And in 2011, when I graduated college, I didn't want to do what I got my degree in, and so I just went straight to Tennessee to join my dad in the business. And so LinkedIn, I didn't even realize it pointed out to me that it's my 13 year work anniversary. And so we realized, too, that this year, he's owned it for 15 years. She's owned it for 15 years. We've owned it just as long as her, which you and I, off camera, were talking about how quickly time is passing that blows our minds. It just feels like we just inherited the place. It felt crazy to realize we'd owned it just as long as her.

Yeah. No, that's wonderful. And as you were saying about your dad visiting and falling in love, I got total goosebumps because that's what hospitality, I think, does for us. It's just the areas, the locations, but also the staff and the properties and helping guests. It just gave me goosebumps, as you said that. So you've been in it for 13 years? My goodness. What was your degree in college?

Air traffic management. It was my sister's degree. She followed in my footsteps because we lived near an Atlanta center and she actually did air traffic control in Puerto Rico for a while and then in Vermont, and then her and her husband when they were in Vermont, just. He was a controller, too. They decided that they'd rather live in the south and be closer to family. And Mallory had worked with us on her summers in college, and she was in love with it. And we work really well together. My family does, thank the good Lord. And so it was a no brainer for them. Let's move to beautiful Tennessee and just enjoy our lives in the family business.

I love it.

So I'm so happy I got her two years ago now.

So you've been in the family business since 2011. You got your sister to follow you, too. How has it changed? Like 13 years when you started till now? What are some of the changes that you've seen?

So, gosh, 2009, dad took over. I showed up in 2011. So in those two years that he was doing this, before I got here, he was pivoting everything to be online. Yes, we had a website, but like 80 something percent of our bookings were done over the phone. And so it's hard to believe, being in the two thousands, that things wouldn't be all e-commerce. But in 2000, 920 eleven, it was still that, still that way. And so he was focusing on getting the right software for the right website and working on SEO and whatever else to stand out in Google and then getting people to book online. So now it's probably like 80 something, 90% online bookings. We still get phone calls and stuff. Because we have a big repeat customer base. 30 years. And people, like, call and talk to you and make sure that they're getting the best special and stuff. And that's the way to get a discount. If you're gonna try, like, don't look online for the discount. Call and ask what you can get. People love when you call. We don't get that interaction very much anymore.

Yeah. Cause as you were saying it about your dad sort of trying to get online when most people are ringing, and I'm thinking, okay, but now we're in 2024, and you don't get people ringing on the phone so much. And it's almost like you want more of that, to have that personal connection with people. We've kind of gone full, I guess you've almost gone full circle in that sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I guess we have. So, yeah, that was a big change. Just your online presence, search engine optimization, that just been a massive change. Like, that's everything right now. We just got together with our marketing team and decided to do a big pivot, redirecting resources from paperclip to more aggressive SEO games. That's huge right now. Gosh, just like, you know, 2011, if I was working with homeowners or meeting homeowners or my dad or whatever, these were just their vacation homes. And so everything was kind of trucking along hunky dory for, like, almost a decade, and that's how it was. And you met and shook the hands of everybody that you were going to bring on to program, and there was just a lot more trust, because now we have an owners portal where they can log in and they can see their bookings, they can see their money, they can see work orders, they can see statements and billing and stuff like that. Up until a few years ago, you just had to trust that everything was being taken care of. And when you would go and visit, you would know if it wasn't was or wasn't. You know, nobody ever asked. Before 2020, what's the projected income? What do you think I'll make on this? I never had to answer that question. Maybe my dad did from time to time, but I never did. People just wanted to make sure their properties were being taken care of, and they knew it would book. And any money is better than no money. And then Q 2021, when you said everybody was just dying to get out on vacation, and we were one of the only opened vacation rental markets in the country in 2021. We closed our doors for two weeks in April, but by May, we felt slammed back. In May, we were open in 2020, and so many more people were finding out about us. And then cue the millennials, who we've had things rough in a lot of in a lot of ways. But now we're at the age where we're like entrepreneurs and we want to find our own way. And you don't want to work for the man. We want to be our own man. So, yeah. Q. Millennials, 2021 cats out of the bag on the Smoky Mountain market and property over here, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly affordable. And so they just started buying up all the available property and they were millennials and they knew about Airbnb, so they didn't want to share any of their money with the property management company.

Yeah. But they've come into the market and sort of taken the Airbnb, the do it yourself kind of feeling.

Yes. So when, when people started buying up rental property, spiking the costs of real estate, hosting their own property and advertising everything online, this, like, content creation, like, you can book it yourself. This is passive income. It changed everything over here. And so to get a baseline on how to handle this market, a lot of these people who were buying in the area were called property management companies, and they asked a bunch of questions. And so for like, several months, you'd be on the hook answering questions, thinking, I'm working with potential homeowners, when really, like, they're just, they're just doing their homework and trying to figure out how to host themselves. And all of a sudden I'm hearing it, call it investment properties. So all they care about is projection. They don't care about the net. All they care about is gross. It's no longer a vacation home. It's an investment property. They've never set foot here. They don't plan to ever set foot here. I'm not shaking hands anymore. I am now dealing with people who are going to be their retirement plan. This is going to be their second job. Even though they weren't really calling it a second job until 2022 and 2023 because they still thought it was going to be passive. But yeah, they just, it was an entirely different set of people that I was talking to. And it happened like this, like, just in a matter of months, hunky dory, smokey mountain market, families, vacation homes. Just take care of my property. Any money I make is better than not two. I don't care about anything that you do. What's the most I can make on this property? What's the projected income? That's all they cared about. That was the very first question. That's all they cared about. So 2021 till now, that just kind of what it's continued to be. So for a good nine years, for almost a decade. Everything was pretty chill. And now it's just totally, totally, completely different ballgame.

That's crazy. That's absolutely not crazy.

Yeah.

And that's one side of the business that's dealing with the property owners. I don't get what people think. Property management's a breeze because that's one part. And then you've got the actual properties, which is another part, and then you've got the guests, which is another part. And then you've got your team, which is another part. So you are dealing with all of these simultaneously. And you, you call yourself a general on the hill, another phrase that you've come up with, but that general on the hill overseeing everything. How, how are you doing it?

Privileged position to have it be the family business. I wasn't hired into a particular role, and those were the duties of my role. That was the routine of my role. With it being a family business. You just gotta keep your finger on the pulse. You gotta keep your ear to the ground. Like, you have to know what's going on at any given time. The businesses that I was watching really, really struggle during pandemic. The reservations team wasn't communicating with the maintenance team. Those managers weren't commuting with housekeeping and laundry. There were walls built around every department. The departments, they weren't communicating. And then throw on top of that, just business relations within the company itself. It just had to have been a mess. They're not communicating. There's got to be a lot of drained relations. And it's just because nobody can see past the wall of their department, really. So when I was kind of coming into my own as general manager, operations manager, just kind of the manager's manager, I was just realizing that a deliberate part of the business has to just be looking at everything, just climbing on top of the hill so that you can see every department, every team, every operation, and you can just get an aerial view on reservations. And is it moving along smoothly or where the patterns are emerging and what can you do to iron out the kinks of those patterns? I could do that with the reservations department and then make sure that that manager felt confident in her position to lead by example and is doing that with reservations department, maintenance department inspections, laundry, housekeeping. On the one hand, I say tear down the walls. Tear down the walls. It's important to have barriers. It's important to have boundaries between departments. But, like, take down the stone walls, if you will. That way, departments can see into other departments and see how when they pass something off, where it goes from there and how it eventually comes around. And it's important for each department to see the full circle on everything. So I just climbed up on the hill, looked at everything, realized that, like, all the departments needed to be communicating better and understanding how they fit into the mechanism together. And so if it being family owned and operated, I could do what I needed to do to make sure that my business was the best it could possibly be. So I just recognized an opportunity to wear, I needed to dislodge myself from being head underwater in whatever certain project was going on or whatever problem was presenting itself or whatever I had to do, and to just look at the whole operation and make sure the managers were comfortable. The managers were confident. They feel well trained. They know I have their back, so that they can lead by example to their people and do that same thing for them. And it just kind of trickles down. I just realized being a general on the hill had to be a part of a Direct Booking Successful business model. Somebody had to be seeing it all.

Yes.

Or else gonna be buried in your little box. Somebody had to be seeing it all.

And where did the term inside out hospitality come from?

So back in 2021, two, I would say right at the beginning of two, I was, like, developing this thought in 2021. 2022 was when I really went hard and started implementing it. I realized that in a sea of competition, something had to allow us to stand out. And I realized that the easiest, cheapest thing to make us stand out was also going to be the most difficult thing any other company would probably have to do. It's easy, it's cheap, it's. It's free, actually. But unless you have somebody coming from the right place and other people generally genuinely trusting and believing them, like my people did with me, another company's not going to be able to pull this off. So I just wanted to have the best customer service possible, period. We run a big operation. We can't put free stuff in everybody's cabins all the time. If I'm going to write a notes for guests, it's going to be handwritten, it's going to be sincere to them. I want to know a little bit about why they're coming to stay. I'm not just going to put notes in every cabin. Like, I'm not going to streamline the process of a little bit of extra hospitality for every single guest. I'm not going to do it. Everybody else can try that. If you can throw money at something, it's not really a problem. So I just wanted the best customer service possible. I wanted it to be felt through email. I wanted to feel it through text messages. I want it to be felt through every phone call. And then if a guest had a problem in their cabin, I wanted to exploit that as an opportunity to impress them with our service, with our kindness, our graciousness, and our patience. Like true when you're talking to us. Feels like family when you're far from home. You spent your hard earned money and your hard earned time off to come hundreds of thousands of miles away from home. I want you to feel comfortable and confident when you're here, too. I want you to feel privileged by staying with us. We already had great customer service, but how was I going to take it to the next level? How was I going to basically make it so good that it branded us? Kind of like how chick fil a is. Their amazing customer service is attached to their brand. I wanted to kind of do the same thing. Like, I wanted our brand to be our personality and that there was probably no real amount of training with what I had in mind. Nobody else was quite training in this capacity. Can't fake it till you make it. You can't just keep buying pizzas and cupcakes. You can't just keep saying, good job, team, or here's gift cards. I actually, I did. I tried all of these things. They were gestures. They're good for a little while, and then they fizzle out and it's not going to get through to the guests. So I realized that the only way to get that genuine next level of hospitality to the guests was to give it to my employees first. And if they have it, it is just literally going to radiate from them out into the guests. So rather than saying, just put a smile on, they'll hear the smile, they'll hear the smile, even though I do enjoy that. And a smile can really change your day. Like, again, you can't fake it till you make it. So rather than focusing my hospitality on the guests, which is what my first idea was, I decided to focus the hospitality inside. And so I just did all kinds of things to make all of our employees want to be here, feel privileged to be here, and actually enjoy being here. It's a bad day. They don't dread coming in. They don't have to be on their game, like on it 100% of the time. I want them to socialize. And then I took elements of home, like houseplants, pets, living room, bookshelves, good lighting, things like that, elements of home that we look forward to. Going home too. And I replicated them here in the office so that they were even surrounded by the comfort of home. And so inside out hospitality is if you want your guests to feel a genuine next level hospitality, you've got to offer it to your own people first. And when they're cared for, they will care for others naturally. It will not be forced. Even when they have a bad day, they're just going to handle it that way naturally, because what they learn over time is when you're handling things with patience and grace and giving people the benefit of the doubt, putting yourself in their shoes and remembering how far they are from home and how much they spent to get here. Like, when that is ingrained within you, they realize how much easier the experience is 360 degrees when they're just offering hospitality, no matter how outrageous the guest is going to be. And so it just kind of began to feed into itself, and they just get it now. Amazing, you know?

Yeah, amazing. Lauren, think about our world leaders. Think about the big corporate leaders. If they had that same mentality, how different would this world be? How different would our lives be?

I know, I know. Like I said, other than like a futon and a bookshelf and some pots for houseplants, like, it's been a really cheap way to train my people and make a difference for our guests and our brand.

I love it.

Essentially free. Like kindness is free. It is free.

Treating people with respect, kindness, and passion. Yeah. And hospitality.

Yeah.

Talking about levels of hospitality, and maybe this comes into your hospitality as a spectrum. You're talking about hospitality on a spectrum. Are you talking about the levels or what does that refer to for me.

Hospitality is a really, really clean, well kept cabin, because that's just showing respect. I don't invite people over to my house and it is dirty. That would be disrespectful to them and their presence and what I think about them. So just even focusing on cleanliness and presentation of the home, if, you know, they're checking in, open the blinds just a little bit, turn on a couple lamps, maybe have spa music playing on the alexa in the background or something. But even just stepping through the door makes that a hospitable experience. They've just had a gnarly road trip. They're tired, they're hungry. They can't wait to have a beer and just stretch out. And the moment they walk through the door, you can offer them that hospitality just through it, being clean and cozy.

And let me add something. Turning the heat on, you know, turning the heat on. You know, if it's winter, turn the heat on before they get there. I took my parents and my daughter. We were in the. In the UK. We went to London for a trip from up north, and we arrived. It was a cold snap, you know, no heat on. The heat had been off for days because they hadn't had anyone in. The place was stuffy. No heat. We turned the heat up as much as we could. We had to go around the house and look for extra blankets and towels so we could sleep. We're talking about old houses. It took at least 24 hours for the heating to really come on fully and really warm the house. And that really had a detrimental effect on our whole vacation. The hospitality that we didn't receive from those managing the property.

Yeah. How simple is that? They see you coming in, they know it's going to be cold, and so they just go up and turn the thermostat up. Like, how. How simple is that?

Yeah, exactly. Not going to cost you anything. I'm not asking if you're walking a big welcome basket. I just need some heat, please.

Yeah. If you walk into a nice, cozy, warm house, you might not think a thing about it, but when you walk into a cold house, you realize just how little they cared about you when you arrived at your business. Back to the spectrum. We don't get very many people checking in our office anymore, but we keep our lobby and our storefront so stinking cute. Like, right now, it's like a mid century modern vintage log cabin lodge theme. And my family and I, we actually visited all sorts of, like, little antique stores in the surrounding states. Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida and stuff. And we found souvenirs for the Smoky mountains in those places. You won't really find them here because people are coming here over the years, getting them and taking them home. So in the surrounding states, we found just tons of these vintage smoky mountain souvenirs. And we have, like, a whole display of them. We also sell candles. We have them locally made by a local craftsman. We brand them. But, like, our lobby is an immersive experience as well. So again, they're just getting in off the road. They've elected to check in at the office, which is just another burden. But the second they walk in, it's so cozy and welcoming. We've got a couch and a fireplace, and we keep the tv on and it's so cute in there. So that's another thing.

Sounds lovely. You might just have guests wanting to stay in the office for their vacation, you know, need to stay in the house. Now. I need to ask you, I need to. I need to talk to you about something else because I noticed something when I was looking through your instagram and you had me roaring with laughter. Let me say, first off, okay, really enjoying what you're creating on Instagram. Now. In some of my training, I use an example of happy cupcake day because I find that, you know, these awareness days in social media, like all these different happy days, national days, whatever. And what I usually see are people using them as filler content. So things that don't connect it at all in their business, they're saying, you know, something like happy cupcake day. You know, nothing else, just a graphic picture of a cupcake. Happy cupcake day. And my whole point is, this is a waste of time. It's a complete waste of time. And you'll just turn people off. You know, you're a baker. Then I could see you using happy Cupcake day. However, you have used unique days like happy smile day, happy weed, your garden day. I know that there's others there too, but you used it in a way to connect with your audience. They are hilarious. So I want to know how and why did you start doing these?

Well, for filler content.

Well, no, don't say it, don't say it.

Happy martini day, by the way. That's for real. But no, it's just that I have a marketing team and they do most of my posts and love my marketing team. I think even they would laugh at this. If there's a boring post, it's come from them. But like I said, filler content for us might be appropriate because we've made our personality our brand, and our brand is so much in our personality. So, like, you know, if 100 people are checking in, 90 are going straight to their cabins, we're never getting to meet them. Maybe there was a text exchange, email, phone call or whatever, but we're never actually getting to meet them. And they don't know us. And our cabins are great. But a cabin is. A cabin is all doing the same things. We're all renting cabins over here. So again, we want to stand out. We're going to do it through our personality. We're going to do it through hospitality. And so one of the ways to do that is by being relatable and you're in. Humor is relatable. And humor on social media, social media content is just relatable. A 32nd video anybody can pay attention to. And so we just have a natural sense of humor about things. We like to share it. It engages people. Nobody's engaging on our post about a one bedroom cabin, but just, I have a logo over my face when I'm introducing the date and I have a logo at the tail end that might show up for 2 seconds. And the content of the video is completely irrelevant to what we do other than it is that supplemental personality. It's that sense of humor. It's making you laugh. It is just showing up on your feed, right? It takes a lot of work to come up with the video, move your day aside to make the video, edit the video, and then plan to upload these videos. Like, I have a notebook full of video ideas, but it takes time and coordination. I never get around to doing them. And I was like, we just need to be posting. I just want to be posting. I want to be getting out in front of people. This is a highly competitive year. Like, I just want to be getting out in front of people and have them remember us. And so I was like, I just need to just keep posting. And I was like, what's the easiest way to do that? What can I do? Like, how on earth could I possibly have a daily post? And I was like, oh, well, in America, every day of the year is some big national summer. Other days, sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's incredibly lame. I didn't think I was going to do a video of call your doctor day, but then I had a funny idea and I just, I was like, okay, I'll do it. I pulled into home at almost 08:00 p.m. I shot it in my car in five minutes. I was inside too, to have dinner within five minutes. You know what I'm saying? So, yeah, it was just like the easiest way to get content out there. Get my logo out there, get our brand out there, let them see our personality was to just, just every, every day of the year, some national day, and I can pick and choose at will. Well, if I'm busy that day, I won't do it. If I'm free that day, I'll do it.

Genius. That's all I say. It's not filler content. You might have felt like that at the beginning, that it's filler content, but it's not. It's connection, it's engaging, it's engagement, it's getting your face out there. It's getting like your brand out there. I just love them. And there are videos with your sister Mallory.

Like, yes.

You guys must have, I think, you know, you watch these things, you know, how. Why do these people actually work? They're having so much fun. But I think bringing her in and going around and looking at the local area and mispronouncing the company names and the places, it's just. It's entertainment.

It's entertainment. I always thought that I wanted to be on SNL growing up, and then I was like, no, I'll just be a writer for SNL. And it's like, okay, I'll just make TikTok videos for my family. I thought about that. I'll just do that. How did you do that?

From that, from wanting to be on SNL to being a traffic controller in college, like, going to college for that.

Oh, some impressionable millennials. We really sold the dream on going to college and having a career for yourself. Our parents were boomers. We were sold the big dream, Jen, and it's just all been pretty flat.

Right, so you're going back to your roots from here.

Yeah.

You're going back to your roots and the writing and the comedy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's another great thing about just being a part of a family business or a small business is like, you know, you just have the freedom to do this and do just whatever you want. I try anything. Just when I think I've posted the lamest video I've ever made, it's the most. It ends up being the most popular video I've ever made. People are just. The general public are just a bunch of goofballs and everybody wants to laugh. So capitalize on that.

Yep. Yep. That's true. That's true. So all of these things that we've spoken about, how have they helped you, you know, the inside out hospitality, looking at the hospitality spectrum, using a happy call your doctor's day and happy smile. How have they all worked together, helping you with your bookings, with guests, do you think?

Well, it's really quite simple. Like I said earlier, like, cabin is a cabin, it's a rental property. Is a rental property. We all do our best to clean. We all do our best to maintain it. We're all doing the. The same thing. You can offer your k cups, you can offer your freebies, we're all doing the same thing. But what they're going to remember is their interactions with you, their confidence in you, the trust, a comfort they gave you that they make you laugh. Were they really easy to talk to? Did you feel like you were in good hands if you had an issue, were they accessible and communicative? Like, these are the things that they're going to remember and it's going to be so important to them that they're going to remember your company name because they don't want to take a chance of having any other experience when they're in town. They just don't want to take that chance. They were spoiled rotten with Auntie Belham's. They want to stay withAuntie Belham's. So all of that has just caused people to want to remember us so that they and their friends and their family are in good hands the next time that they come here. That's the impact it's had. It's made it so that we're getting more repeat guests and clientele than ever. And even if somebody's not technically a repeat, but like their aunt stayed here and highly recommended us, I'm going to collect that as a repeat. You know, it's not in our numbers, but I'm going to take it as one. Because of your family's word of mouth, because they remembered experiencing us, not our properties, they remembered experiencing us enough to recommend us. So all this fun, all this goofiness, all these cheap tricks and free kindness, people just remember us.

That's great. That's great. And you know, this podcast is direct booking Direct Booking Success. We know the word Direct Booking Success is very subjective. So I want to hear what you think that direct booking Direct Booking Success means.

For me, direct booking Direct Booking Success means if they found you on Airbnb, they're booking with you the next time they come back. And direct booking Direct Booking Success also means I know my guests are saving money by booking directly with us too. I mean it when I say, and maybe not a good stance as a business owner, but I mean it when I say I do want to save my guests money. I really genuinely do. Because I want to save money because I know what I can do with the extra money in my life to help my loved ones and set up my future. Every dollar genuinely counts. And a dollar saved with us might be a dollar they spend in town to help their kid create an extra memory. So I genuinely do want to save my guests money. They can do that by booking directly, not booking on platform with someone else. And so again with the videos and the branding and the communication styles, that's all built to get that direct booking again in the future. Save them money, cut out the middleman. Direct booking Direct Booking Success means a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

I think it's really good what you've said. I think money that your guests can save by booking direct with you, they can then spend it with a restaurant, another local business. It helps them, it helps the local economy, it helps everything. So I loved speaking with you, Lauren. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm gonna put your links in the show notes. I follow on TikTok, Instagram, @auntiebelhams. It's fabulous. You really are. It's entertainment, it's interesting, it's marketing. But on a personal level, if that makes sense. I know you have a special offer for those listening as well, don't you?

Yeah. Look, I know y'all like to come to the Smoky mountains. We're one of the most popular vacation destinations in the country. So if any of y'all are wanting to come visit the smokies, stay over here in Gatlinburg or pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I would obviously love to earn your business. And if you found out about us through Jen's podcast, 15% off of your stay. I'll do it. I'll do it year round. I'll do it. Holidays I'll do 15% off your stay.

Brilliant. So links are in the show notes. Come and look at what Lauren's doing on socials. And yeah, for wanting to go to the smokies, we know where you can stay. Thanks Lauren.

Thank you Jenn. Thanks y'all.

If you've enjoyed listening to this episode, please check out the direct booking Direct Booking Success YouTube channel. All the episodes are available there to be streamed. Make sure to subscribe to the channel so you'll be notified when a new episode drops. And feel free to share the episodes with others you think might benefit from learning more about direct booking. You've probably heard it a thousand times. Just be consistent and the bookings will roll in. But what if I told you that's not the whole story? What if there's a smarter, more efficient way to market your short term rentals and actually see results in the next episode of the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast? I'm going to be revealing why simply being consistent might actually be holding me back and what you should be doing instead. I'll cover practical tips, real life Direct Booking Success stories, and actionable strategies to transform your marketing from frustrating to fabulous. Until then, go out and take action for your own direct booking Direct Booking Success. I'll see you next time. Hey thanks for listening to the direct booking Direct Booking Success podcast. For more information about this episode and others, head to the website directbookingDirect Booking Success.com podcast. See you next time.