IAM1942 – Entrepreneur Revolutionizing the Vacation Rental Industry

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Wendy Schultz Teaser 00:00

What we've learned over time and putting it into a consulting type role package that people can purchase and we can help them pick out a property. We can help them get it remodeled and get the permits and licenses and get everything running.

So basically, if someone's interested in that property, we can help them get completely set up.

Intro 00:24

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:51

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we were purposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month we are focusing on finishing it out, fighting the good fight and closing out the job. I think just as important as it is to start something, it's even more important in how you conclude it or finish it out. So if you think of the different things that you can finish out, it'd be everything from a project, it could be from a day, it could also be from a business in and of itself, and it can also of course be for the year. So when you think of finishing out, I want you to really think of these episodes because what we're going to really focus on is the last question that we really ask, which is defining what it means to be a CEO.

All the creative, innovative, and I think truly insightful questions that we received from this question is really what we want to highlight during the show. But of course, we want you to enjoy the entire episode and think about how you're going to finish things out and how you're going to finish things out strongly. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Wendy Schultz of the Simple Life Hospitality. Wendy, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Wendy Schultz 02:24

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 02:26

No problem. Super excited to have you on. What I wanted to do is read a little bit more about Wendy so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Dubbed the vacation rental gurus, Wendy Schultz and her husband, Scott, are revolutionizing the vacation rental industry, Airbnb. After leading a high-stress corporate job in health care over five years ago to pursue her dream of owning a business, Wendy has developed a company that incorporates her love for vacations and real estate known as the Simple Life Hospitality.

Her team teaches investors how to get started in vacation rentals and offers consultation from property selection to remodeling and furnishing to ongoing property management.

Wendy, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Wendy Schultz 03:08

Let's do that.

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Gresham Harkless 03:09

Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Wendy Schultz 03:16

So I always knew that I wanted to start a business. I grew up with a father who was a business owner, and I quickly discovered that I'm not the best at following rules. I didn't really like to have anyone telling me how to spend my day, how to spend a lunch break, when I had to take a lunch break and things like that. I was often always forward-thinking. I often had to try to convince an entire organization to move in a direction that I could foresee was the right way, but they couldn't yet.

So it could get pretty exhausting. That was of course, gosh, how many years was I in corporate? Probably about fifteen years maybe and I just really got burned out and I decided that I wanted to start a business. Wasn't really sure what I wanted to start just knew I needed to get outta there. I had originally started as a vacation, rent or vacation home decor type store. I had started it online. Eventually evolved to a brick and mortar and then really decided that I liked vacation rentals when we purchased the property for us to stay in while we were working at the store.

It was hour and 30 minutes away so we didn't want to go back and forth to the store. We just wanted a place to stay and we decided that we really like renting it out a lot more than we like giving up that money and staying there for ourselves. So we ended up getting in a backwards way into vacation rentals and then people started asking us to help them with their vacation rentals and it really snowballed from there to the point where we ended up closing our store to just focus fully on vacation rental.

Gresham Harkless 05:06

Nice. I absolutely love that. It seems like you just kept testing out different things and then starting to listen to what kind of felt natural, what could establish yourself and had legs and you went with it.

Wendy Schultz 05:18

Absolutely. That is really been one of the biggest things is that I was really open to the ideas, and I also wasn't afraid to try something I'd never done before, and that's something that a lot of people admire about me. Also I think I'm crazy because like I never had a retail store before I opened one, I'd never done a hotel remodeling project before I bid on one and got it .

I'd never owned vacation months and I'd never managed for anybody else. A lot of people that would stop them is they don't have experience and I'm more of, ah, figure it out. At times I've been wrong, but usually I can draw upon skills I've learned in other roles to figure out something new.

Gresham Harkless 06:08

Yeah. I too feel like I'm sometimes a jump in the deep end type and figure out if you can swim. Sometimes I have not swam too well and some of the other times I have a lot better than I expected I would. But a lot of times that action is like what entrepreneurs and business owners need to fire on.

Wendy Schultz 06:23

For sure especially if you're looking to put something that's new and innovative out in the world. You can't have experience doing something that's brand new, you have to venture out a little farther. I would say that's a muscle that kind of grew. It wasn't something that I started out Hey, let's try something like this.

I would put my toe in the water and I didn't die. So I'm gonna go a little farther. Let's go a little farther. A little farther. And now, the risks that people see me take seem massive to them, but It wasn't like that the first day I started my business, it took a while to evolve to this.

Gresham Harkless 07:01

Yeah and that's a really great point. I definitely appreciate you for sharing that.

I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper with the Simple Life Hospitality to hear a little bit more about what you're doing for your clients and what you feel sets you guys apart.

Wendy Schultz 07:13

Sure. So the Simple Life Hospitality started off as a vacation rental property management company. So we do full-service property management for people who have a vacation rental, Airbnb, VRBO, whatever you want to call it, short term rentals, another term. So what we do is we will help with the guests bookings and interactions and helping the guests while they're on site. Basically if somebody owns a vacation property or short term rental property, we basically take care of everything that they need so that they can enjoy their property without having to work at it. So it's really passive for our owners. Over time discovered that a lot of people were really interested in this area because Airbnb has been a very big topic out in the market.

People are really intrigued by it and especially real state investors who I have a number of my circles and so they really wanted to learn about it. So basically we ended up taking what we've learnt over time and putting it into a consulting type role package that people can purchase and we can help them pick out a property. We can help them get it remodeled and get the permits and licenses and get everything running. So basically, if someone's interested in that property, we can help them get completely set up. Then we also started with kind of a DIY thing for the people who really want to learn the process, but don't necessarily want the hands on help. We've started a course for them to learn how to do this.

The main difference for us is that roperty management is an old school thing in a lot of areas. You go to an office and you pick up a key or sometimes it's a rent limit and you have to pay by tax. There are just various things that are really antiquated and what we wanted to do was come in as a fresh new property management company that's going to really revolutionize the vacation rental industry and help make our life property owners a lot more money than they're making currently.

Gresham Harkless 09:25

Nice. I absolutely love that. I think that, when there's true innovation, just as we spoke about in the beginning, sometimes you need that fresh mentality or the fresh eyes to an industry that maybe is a little bit more antiquated as you said, and can definitely use some change and some revolutionizing.

Wendy Schultz 09:42

Yeah, because I think there's been a lot of revolutionizing by having the Airbnb that's pretty, pretty advanced, but there are people who don't want to necessarily manage their own properties. So we're trying to incorporate the Airbnb platforms, the VRBO platforms, and other social media bookings and things like that.

Really utilizing today's technology and putting it into a package that people can have a property that they don't have to manage themselves, but yet incorporates everything that a modern day traveler really wants.

Gresham Harkless 10:16

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Wendy Schultz 10:25

I really embrace the lifestyle entrepreneur. So whenever I'm putting my businesses together and how I think about my business, I'm trying to make it so that it's location independent, time freedom and that I can basically work whenever and wherever I want. So what I try to do is I'm really modeling after entrepreneurs who are not saying work life balance. It's more kind of like work life integration. How can I take something, we make money on something we love to do, vacation rentals.

We can stay there and get to enjoy the property ourselves. But yeah do some work there while we're there and our girls, we have two daughters and they enjoy going and looking at properties to learn, able to incorporate them and get them interested. One of my daughters wants to become an interior designer after all the different things we get to do.

Gresham Harkless 11:24

Yeah, like Tim Ferriss too, for our work week, people like that. Yeah, you don't necessarily want to get away from it, but you want to make sure that it works in alignment with everything you want and all your goals, whether that be personal or professional. So I love that.

Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Wendy Schultz 11:45

I still am telling myself this all the time is to be open to the opportunities and that sometimes what seems like a bad thing happening or adversity is actually the springboard to something much more amazing. Just to really go with the flow and enjoy the journey as much as the destination. I still am consistently growing. I'm still consistently having to remind myself. I'm still getting coached at it. Look at literally just an hour ago, I'm with my coach, she's like go back and look at different times in your life when you thought things were like bad or things weren't going to work out and that they worked out.

That's really been, I think a driver for me is when I'm going into something new and scary, I will go back and say, you know what, I didn't know what I was doing back then and I survived and it turned out really well. Or, that didn't work out, but it actually ended up being much better in the long run and what ended up working out was far better than I had imagined. So I think just really not being so rigid on how things have to be and being open to the various opportunities that are presented to you. I think that's it.

Gresham Harkless 13:06

Yeah, absolutely. And I think most entrepreneurial type people would definitely want to be able to direct as much as possible and be in control. But sometimes it happens the way it should and there's a reason for that and just go with it. Go with the flow so to speak. I love that.

Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show. So Wendy, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Wendy Schultz 13:30

For me, being a CEO is to be really the visionary of the company. Being the one who is driving the ship and a big vision, but not necessarily getting into the nitty gritty weeds, which has been at times difficult for me to not want to get into the weeds. But it's really being a leader of a revolution and creating a company of something that doesn't exist out there and it's important to create, but it's not been done before.

As a CEO, I am building my team constantly. I've got new people on board and I've been teaching them and showing them the vision and to see them develop as employees and to be able to take initiative on certain things that I've directed as a vision, but they are able to take initiative and go execute has been really very rewarding.

Gresham Harkless 14:40

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And it seems like it's built around your business and all your entrepreneurship that you've been doing from the beginning and I definitely appreciate that definition.

What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and our listeners know, and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

Wendy Schultz 14:58

Let's see here. What else would I let you know? I would say that you should really just go for it and not be caught up in the not knowing how to do something and not having figured it all out yet. And for myself, you can get ahold of me at simpleliferental.com. If you want to contact us, you can get ahold of us and learn a little bit more about our property management or our properties you can book and stay in.

We also recently launched a course that teaches you how to get started in vacation rental, and if that's of interest to you, please go ahead and contact us and we would be happy to send that over to you. We actually have a free webinar on it too, so if you came and were like, what is this all about? We can get you hooked up with that as well.

Gresham Harkless 15:53

Nice. I truly appreciate you for your time today and for sharing that with us. Wendy, we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well. But I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Wendy Schultz 16:02

Thanks, Gresham. So nice talking with you.

Outro 16:04

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts, subscribe and leave us a five-star rating.

Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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